Prague Charles bridge

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。

id: 4dku5YT

investing

  • debt and AI

20261007 Singapore. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva: Skyrocketing energy costs from two devastating wars. Record-high public debt amid ballooning government bond yields. Debilitating inflation rates, sluggish fiscal growth, and new artificial intelligence investment risks. The global economy is in for a tough 2027, International Monetary Fund (IMF) chief Kristalina Georgieva warned on Wednesday.
Last week, G-7 nations agreed to release 100 million barrels of diesel and crude from their reserves over the next four months to try to rein in high fuel prices. Yet Brent crude still exceeded $100 per barrel on Wednesday, and West Texas Intermediate rose to nearly $90 per barrel.

Further worrying economists is the global bond sell-off, whose resumption on Wednesday pushed long-term borrowing costs to some of their highest levels in decades. France’s 10-year yields hit 4.93 percent; Britain’s 30-year gilt reached a 28-year high of roughly 6 percent; and 30-year U.S. Treasurys climbed to 5.73 percent, their highest level since 2002.

  • debt problem

one explanation: investors are losing faith in the dollar. rising yields and record gold prices are two symptoms of the same disease: Uncle Sam printing dollars to cover its debt.

A $4 billion operation cannot move a market measured in trillions. While debt management can smooth market liquidity, it cannot create savings. The only real solution is to put fiscal policy on a sustainable trajectory. That will require a combination of tax increases and spending cuts.

A 3 percent long-term real yield means capital scarcity is binding again. Near-zero rates from 2008 to 2020 taught borrowers, Congress most of all, to treat capital as basically free. Those days are gone.

Bondholders are the only remaining check on federal borrowing. And they are unforgiving. While they may tolerate profligacy for a while, they will eventually punish it, and there is little voters and politicians can do to prevent it.

  • 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.

  • 日币“崩跌”,不止美元裂缝一条

短期内,日元面临三重压制:日美利差仍高达2.5个百分点以上,日本央行缺乏激进加息的财政空间,以及日本政府干预效果的持续衰减。这三重力量在可预见的未来不会发生根本性逆转。日本相关人士表示,中性利率水平“较难准确判断”,需要避免“加息过快导致金融环境收紧过度”,市场将此解读为日本央行将在加息路径上保持极度审慎的态度。

但有一个变量值得持续关注。如果日元持续逼近160甚至突破这一关口,日本财务省可能被迫再次启动大规模干预,而美国参与联合行动的可能性也并非不存在。

需要提醒的是,这场日元的漫长下坠,早已不再是日本一国的货币故事。它是全球高债务体系的一次压力测试,美元的储备货币特权,建立在全球债权人持续购买美债的基础之上,而日本作为最重要的海外债权人之一,其财政与货币困境,正在撕开旧全球金融秩序的裂缝。日元的每一次震荡,都会沿着美债、套息交易、区域汇率链条传导至世界各个角落。

对于全球投资者而言,日元的行情不只是外汇盘面的数字波动,更是观测全球债务、流动性与地缘风险最直观的窗口。更需铭记的是,“总有一天,市场会彻底无视这些干预措施。”

  • next rate hike?

09/29: New York Fed President John Williams sees no urgency for next rate hike at Buffalo. “With the policy action we took at our September meeting, there is no need for urgency, and we have time to gather more information. The accumulation of more data should provide greater clarity on the underlying trends in the economy and the associated risks to achieving our goals—and thereby the appropriate setting of monetary policy.” “If the economy evolves in a manner broadly consistent with my forecast, one further upward adjustment of the federal funds target range may be appropriate late this year to support a timelier return of inflation to target. But that is just my forecast, and time—and the totality of the data—will tell.”

09/30 August PCE data: 0.2 percent at a monthly rate lower than the expected 0.3 percent.

10/02: France has proposed plan to release 50 million barrels of diesel reserve from Europe and 50 million barrels of crude oil reserve across IEA members.

10/02: nonfarm data: jobs 2.9m vs 9m expected. jobless rate in September is 4.2% vs 4.1% expected.

Bank of America (BAC) strategist Michael Hartnett advises investors to avoid riskier trades until the dollar peaks and bond yields retreat from multidecade highs. The Bloomberg dollar index has risen 3% from its September low as investors rebuild cash and reduce leverage. Hartnett recommends starting to add bonds, while warning that deeper declines in small caps and banks could signal weakening growth optimism and eventually pressure technology stocks.

The global bond selloff intensified into October. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield briefly reached 5.34% on October 1, its highest level since 2002, before easing to roughly 5.25% early October 2. The U.S. dollar index rose to 102.08, a 17-month high, and was on pace for a third straight weekly gain. The immediate driver is no longer only expected short-term Fed policy; market commentary increasingly attributes rising long-end yields to a higher term premium—extra compensation for holding long bonds amid inflation, Treasury-supply, and fiscal-risk concerns.

  • AI bubble and US debt

纳斯达克的预估盈余收益率约为4%,S&P500整体的预估盈余收益率为约5.12%,两者都低于10年期美债收益率5.24%。这意味着投资人在买股票与买国债之间会更为犹豫,股价将因此承受压力,特别是高估值的科技股。

国债收益率愈高,未来的钱就“愈不值钱”,那现在的估值就高估了。买股票就是买公司的未来,如果趋势是,未来的钱比想象中更不值钱,那现在就应降低公司估值。所以才说,国债收益率飙升,最不利于高估值企业,尤其是那些没有本业兜底的新创公司如Anthropic和OpenAI。

9月28日,英伟达宣布1500亿美元回购自家股票的计划,提振市场信心,并意图抵销美债收益率上升带来的股价压力。股价基本是由本益比(P/E)与每股盈余(EPS)所组成,回购股票有助于减少流通股数,增加每股盈余,以支撑股价。美债收益率上升,会使折现率上升(未来的钱愈贬值),降低本益比,致使股价承压。因此,英伟达此举是试图最大程度抵销美债收益率上升对股价的负面因素。由于英伟达是赚钱的公司,因此仍有充沛的自由现金流可以回购股票。

美债问题是全球性的大问题,这个泡沫的风险远比AI泡沫更严峻,影响更大,因此,为了防止美债泡沫破裂,AI产业成了缓解美债危机的解药之一,这才是“AI泡沫不会破”论的最大底气。

notes

“人生而自由,却无往不在枷锁之中”是卢梭的名著《社会契约论》的开篇词。当年选择来美国并且坚持在这里工作和生活,实际上是选择了一具“宽松的枷锁”。

人可以被分为两类:一类是“聚人”,可以专注于一件事而无视其他任何事,这类人做科研工作往往比较出色;另一类是“散人”,其兴趣十分广泛,这类人适合做信息传播和管理工作。这种现象大概与早期人类的狩猎采集生活方式有关:做科研类似于钻进深山老林去打猎,而兴趣广泛的人则与当年采集果实的过程相关。

古人云:“大道至简至易。”

在李嘉诚的办公室里有一副对联:“发上等愿,结中等缘,享下等福;择高处立,寻平处坐,向宽处行。”

做金融的人,对经济最敏感。所谓春江水暖鸭先知,鸭子知道了,鸡还不知道,狗更没感觉嘛。

  • Robert D. Kaplan: 美国误判中国

第二次世界大战期间,美国支持中国的蒋介石对抗20世纪30年代入侵的日本法西斯。罗斯福政府设想,由蒋介石的国民党领导的中国将在二战后与美国、英国和苏联并列成为“四大国”之一。当毛泽东领导下的中国共产党在1946至1949年的内战中取得全面胜利时,华盛顿大惊失色。必须有人为此承担责任。“谁弄丢了中国?”的争论由此诞生,并成为20世纪50年代“红色恐慌”的关键组成部分。

理查德·尼克松总统及其国家安全顾问亨利·基辛格在1972年实现的对华外交破冰终结了“谁弄丢了中国”的争论。中国不再是被“弄丢的”,而是变成了地缘政治棋盘上用来制衡苏联的一枚棋子。尼克松和基辛格的这一构想一直维持到1989年,当时中国在天安门广场的残酷镇压与冷战结束的双重因素意味着,中国不仅遭到唾弃,而且随着欧洲共产主义的终结,其作为一项资产的价值也大打折扣。

在20世纪90年代。江泽民和他的副手朱镕基展现出了极大魄力,以至于民主党和共和党都认为,如果允许中国加入世界贸易组织(WTO),它将走上一条通往资本主义和自由社会的道路。比尔·克林顿总统持有这种观点——但绝非只有他一人。这是华盛顿的第三次误判。乘着冷战胜利之势,华盛顿建制派理所当然地认为中国会效仿欧洲走向自由之路。遗憾的是,中国不是欧洲。被接纳加入世贸组织后,中国最终在习近平治下重新转向了全面的威权主义。

终极的地缘政治灾难将是围绕台湾和南海爆发军事冲突。乌克兰、加沙和伊朗的战争导致公众与精英之间产生了严重分歧,但并未从根本上改变我们的生活。如果世界两大经济体在西太平洋爆发高烈度军事冲突,将破坏最至关重要的供应链,并深刻地改变我们的世界。将其与第一次世界大战相提并论毫不夸张。

Book: The Proud Tower: A Portrait of the World Before the War, 1890-1914, by Barbara W. Tuchman

  • 要学英语

不同的时代对人的基本技能要求也不一样,农耕社会要求耕种和针线活是基本技能,游牧社会要求放牧和骑马是基本技能。现在的时代电脑和英语也被认为是两项最有用的基本技能。

Pierre Rosanvallon

决定发生在今天,代价却可能在几十年后支付。享受利益的人与承担后果的人,并不总是同一批人。这形成了现代民主一个奇特的不对称:在空间上,它用了两百多年不断扩大代表范围;在时间上,它的代表制度却几乎停留在现在。现在是否有权统治未来?民主最初要打破的是时间向后的权威——死人不能统治活人。到了21世纪,人类面对的却越来越是相反的问题:活着的人正在决定尚未出生者的生活条件。民主革命解决了一种时间压迫,却留下了另一种时间不平等。

过去两百年,现代民主最重要的成就之一,是不断扩大“我们”的范围。没有财产的人进入了“我们”,妇女进入了“我们”,曾经遭受制度性排斥的人也不断进入“我们”。民主史因此可以被理解为一个边界持续扩展的过程:越来越多原本没有声音的人,成为拥有权利的人。

21世纪正在迫使这个“我们”再扩展一次,只是这一次,扩展的方向不再主要是空间,而是时间。过去政治争论的是土地、疆界、阶级、身份、选区和代表权。地图因此成为政治最重要的图像:左边是谁,右边是谁;中心在哪里,边缘在哪里;国家的边界在哪里。未来的政治还需要另一张地图。它不是横着铺开的,而是纵向展开的。一端是过去,一端是未来,中间只有极其狭窄的一点叫作现在。每一代人都只在这里停留片刻,却同时继承过去,并改变未来。

对疫情的记忆大概也只剩下了福建泉州新冠肺炎疫情隔离观察点的整体坍塌、贵州转运大巴的惨烈车祸、新疆乌鲁木齐吉祥苑小区的大火以及那夜北京亮马桥和上海乌鲁木齐中路举起的白纸。

官方对任志强的定罪完全是因为他“从事政治对抗”,是党的最高领袖容不下一个退休党员如此刺耳的批评声音。或许,任志强的祸根早在2016年2月习近平视察央视就埋下了,面对“央视姓党”的表白,任志强当初写下的“当所有的媒体有了姓,并且不代表人民的利益时,人民就被抛弃到被遗忘的角落了”,可能就成了日后被清算的伏笔,恰巧“皇帝的新衣”成了拿下他的最好理由。任志强虽然主动规避了习近平的名讳,但却直言不讳地将其暗讽为“一位剥光了衣服也要坚持当皇帝的小丑”,称那场习近平主导的17万人防疫大会,“举国上下都在为伟大领袖的讲话而欢呼雀跃,似乎中国又进入了那个曾经伟大的大跃进时代,又进入了四处红旗飘舞,高举红宝书,三呼领袖‘万岁、万岁、万万岁’的时代”。任志强因言获罪落得18年牢狱之灾。

book: 裴信(Bùi Tín)Bui Tin, Following Ho 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

《维特根斯坦传:天才之责任》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

book: Ludwig Wittgenstein by Edward Kanterian, 2007

book: Time of the Magicians: Wittgenstein, Benjamin, Cassirer, Heidegger, and the Decade That Reinvented Philosophy by Wolfram Eilenberger (Author), Shaun Whiteside (Translator)

《逻辑哲学论》主张:语言的边界,塑造着人所能把握的世界。“我的语言的界限意味着我的世界的界限”(Wittgenstein, Tractatus 5.6)。这不是语言学句法,而是存在的提醒:许多关于价值、意义、上帝与人生的重大问题,并非“可说的事实问题”,而是“不可说而唯可显现”的域。他在书末宣示:“凡不可说者,必须保持沉默”(Wittgenstein, Tractatus 7)。这条线,把科学讨论与人生难题分际标出:科学能解释事实,却触不到“价值为何为价值”。

《哲学研究》把目光从逻辑形式移向“我们说话—行动的方式”。他指出:“一个词的意义,就是它在语言中的用法”(Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §43);哲学的任务,是“与语言对理智的蛊惑作战”(Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations §109)。这条线,把抽象理论转回共同体的实践:意义不是在头脑里,而是在公共活动中;伦理不是一句口号,而是被看见的生活样式。

其一:为语言祛魅。许多焦虑来自概念的混乱。先把“能说清”的与“不可说”的分开。能说清的,就用朴素语言把事实摆出来;不可说的,就用行动去承担,用沉默给出边界。少一些“宏大词”,多一些“准确词”。这会减少误解,也会降低人与人之间的摩擦。

其二:把价值落在手上。幸福离不开“做”。不论是教书、写作、护理,还是手工,一项认真做好的工作,会带来稳定而内在的满足。维特根斯坦对“细节”的近乎苛求,是提醒:审美与伦理相通;把一件事情做漂亮,就是把自己摆到一个更有秩序的位置。

其三:简化欲望,降低虚荣的占比。他把遗产让出,把生活压到简单的尺度。这不是鼓励贫穷,而是反对被占有物反过来占有。幸福感很大一部分来自“减少无谓比较”,把注意力从“别人怎样看”转回“自己怎样做”。

其四:对痛苦保持正视,但不夸饰。他不否认痛苦,也不拿痛苦当旗帜。承认它,描述它,给它留位置;同时用工作与关怀把自己从痛苦里提出一点。幸福不是消灭痛苦,而是把痛苦安置在更大的秩序里。

其五:给孤独正名。他多次隐居写作、断开社交。孤独不是反社会,而是“与自己对齐”的必要工序。适量的独处,使人能看见内心的真实需求,防止在嘈杂中迷失。

其六:对真诚保持敬畏。他把“说谎”当作对自我的破坏。真诚处理错误,勇于道歉,比辩解更能减少长期的损耗。关系中的信任,来自这种不耍滑、不装饰的态度。

幸福不是一次性的顿悟,而是许多小决定的累加。维特根斯坦的一生并不“顺遂”,他常被焦虑追逐,也常对自己失望;但他从未放弃对诚实与清澈的追求。

G.E.Moore(G. E. 摩尔)1893年进入剑桥大学。在此后的30年中,与罗素和维特根斯坦一道,推动了哲学研究从心灵分析到语言分析的转向,一手开创了作为英美哲学主流的分析哲学。

分析哲学,即使是作为一种哲学研究的风格和品味而非一种学派,其实也分为两支:主流是从罗素那里得来的逻辑主义,以逻辑实证主义为代表;支流则是从摩尔这里继承的日常语言的概念分析,后来为日常语言学派发扬。维特根斯坦的地位比较复杂 ,他可以说在早期和晚期分别对两派都有影响。剑桥大学从新黑格尔主义的桥头堡到分析哲学大本营的历史性转变

Shania Twain, Man! I feel like a woman

what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger? No.

Erich Maria Remarque: This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped shells, were destroyed by the war.

Toni Morrison: Clever, but schoolteacher beat him anyway to show him that definitions belonged to the definers — not the defined.

Marcel Proust: The only true voyage of discovery . . . would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to behold the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to behold the hundred universes that each of them beholds, that each of them is.

Viktor Frankl: Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms — to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.

  • book: Why It’s Better To Be Struggling Half-way Up A High Hill On Your Own: A Poetry Collection by Aidan Parr

  • kagi, a better way to use the web

  • book: Strange Justice: The Selling of Clarence Thomas, by Jane Mayer, Jill Abramson, 1994

  • Daring Fireball

20260930: Anthropic is making a massive bet that AI will transform the global economy more profoundly than industrialization, electricity and the internet, according to its IPO prospectus seen by Reuters.

This is not an IPO that makes sense if you consider Anthropic one among peers, even a short list placing them alongside just (say) OpenAI, Google, and Meta. It only makes sense if you believe Anthropic is on the cusp of winning a race to create a godlike super intelligence, and that first godlike super intelligence will take over the world.

But the cost to get there will be staggering. Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion in 2025, and plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing and infrastructure obligations in coming years, according to the prospectus.

Their revenue is accelerating rapidly because they’re selling compute at a loss. They spent $13 billion to make $5 billion last year. Their revenue is growing rapidly, yes, but their costs are growing even faster.

Gary Marcus: Anthropic’s proposed valuation is easily calculated, as about 50 times 2025 losses. The more they lose, the more they win! (This is really insane, isn’t it?)

Jeremy Stern’s profile of mark Zuckerberg: AI is not, in fact, God. Instead, it does math and solves a limited set of problems humans face, and is otherwise simply useful and cool. Anthropic, and to a lesser extent OpenAI, have trouble ever accepting this fact. Zuckerberg does not. He has not spent a decade comparing his company to the Manhattan Project, and thus he is not above pushing the frontier of AI to help people book airline tickets, make dinner reservations, and edit photos. He will use it to drive down the cost of serving his users to zero, and to drive up his revenue by improving ads. He will use cash from the ad business — and his ownership of data centers, chips, and other infrastructure that Anthropic and OpenAI have to pay to rent — to undercut them on price. The potential install base for his AI is 3.6 billion people, who don’t care whether a given model is six months behind the frontier.

Alexandr Wang “why we’re building muse” wrote that Muse “Clears the way and solves all the problems it can until the human part, the wanting and the dreaming, is all that’s left.” That’s dystopic, not utopic. It’s the actual creation and doing of things that makes life worthwhile — not just wanting and dreaming about it.

五一六通知: “混進黨裡、政府裡、軍隊裡和各種文化界的資產階級代表人物,是一批反革命的修正主義分子,一旦時機成熟,他們就會要奪取政權,由無產階级專政變為資產階級專政。這些人物,有些已被我們識破了,有些則還沒有被識破,有些正在受到我們信用,被培養為我們的接班人,例如赫鲁曉夫那樣的人物,他們現正睡在我們的身旁,各级黨委必须充分注意這一点。” 整黨内走資本主義道路的當權派

  • $3bn donation from Citadel CEO Ken Griffin will go toward building a new Miami campus

Carnegie Mellon University will receive an unprecedented $3bn donation from the billionaire investor Ken Griffin, making it the largest single donation in the history of US education. Part of the funding will be used to develop Carnegie Mellon’s presence in Miami, Florida, where Griffin lives and where Citadel is now headquartered. The rest will support priorities in Pittsburgh, including recruiting prominent academics and making attendance more affordable for students.

  • 邵城阳: 人类数学家,终于还是踩进了历史的泥潭

Chang 和 Fu(2020)将菲尔兹奖得主嵌入“数学谱系”(Math Genealogy)师承网络后发现,极少数学术谱系——如 Schwartz-Grothendieck-Deligne 与 Lions-Villani-Figalli 谱系——展现出惊人的影响力。仅在 Laurent Schwartz 之后五代之内,就诞生了占当时总数 13.3% 的七位菲尔兹奖得主。这当然绝不说明菲尔兹奖的评审是被某些学派操纵的。它揭示了另一个事实:即便在最强调个人天才的领域,人才的发现、培养与承认依然高度依附于少数学术机构与师承网络。

总结起来,一个研究方向得到多少关注、年轻人跟随谁学习、什么问题被视作重要,从不单由数学内容本身决定。少数院系控制职业入口,少数学术谱系反复占据最高荣誉,它们便拥有了将自身判断扩散为共同标准的力量。这套秩序完全建立在技能的稀缺之上:当一种能力需要十几年训练才能获得,掌控评价标准的人,就能决定其他人把注意力投向何处。

这或许正是历史最引人入胜的地方:它很少照原样重演,然而相似的力量关系却在不同的事物中反复出现。人们总以为自己面对前所未有的现实,直到现实本身呈现出历史性的规律,人们才惊觉自己并不多么特殊。

算力没有赋予人类更深的数学直觉,它只是暴力地切断了答案对训练年限的依赖,暴露出手工业时代“答案=理解”不过是评估成本过高时的粗糙妥协。

这套“开放传统”本身也是基于手工业式的生产方式形成的。原则上,论文一经发表,其定义、定理与证明便向全人类开放。但这种公开其实是选择性的。实际上,学术发表长久以来都排斥阴性结果,而这在许多实验学科中造成了严重的p值崇拜和可复现性问题。对于数学研究来说,失败的尝试并不会随着论文一并发表,而决定研究方向的关键思路,则仅在少数讨论班、学术访问和私人通信等闭门网络中低速流动。既有评价体系主要奖励可审计的成果,但没有正式的制度保护隐性知识和互惠交流。数学共同体之所以能维持这种交流方式,完全依赖于手工业时代的默契:提前透露未成熟的思路,是为了在同行间换取合作与反馈,因为没有哪个个体能够在一夜之间凭空吞噬他人的成果。

现在,OpenAI的策略直接击碎了这种手工业默契。当然,它不是从外部破坏了一个原本完美透明的学术秩序。它只是揭示出:当现代机器开始以工业化的规模生产答案与搜索路径时,既有的信念便显现出了其时代局限与内在矛盾。由此,三个更现实的问题摆在数学界面前:当答案可以被工业化生产,数学究竟在生产什么、将由谁来生产,生产条件又如何?