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“In modernist art, obscurity can be a conscious strategy. It is one of the ways in which the artwork can avoid being consumed too easily. Poems need to thicken their textures and scramble their syntax if they are not to slip down too easily, which is the fate of the commodity. Everyday language is no longer a medium of truth. It has grown stale and threadbare, and only by wreaking violence on it can you force it to yield something of value. Literary modernism sends language on a spree, but that’s because it is so distrustful of it. Jameson has some comments here on Benjamin’s idea of an ur-language, an original speech in which things speak their own names. Then comes the Fall, in which the bond between word and thing is broken. Words become arbitrary signs of things, and language degenerates into a Babel of tongues. ...

Here are some quotes from Alex Rosenberg. Is there a God? No. What is the nature of reality? What physics says it is. What is the purpose of the universe? There is none. What is the meaning of life? Ditto. Why am I here? Just dumb luck. Does prayer work? Of course not. Is there a soul? Is it immortal? Are you kidding? Is there free will? Not a chance! ...

“It’s not true that fate slips silently into our lives. It steps in through the door that we have opened, and we invite it to enter. No one is strong enough or cunning enough to avert by word or deed the misfortune that is rooted in the iron laws of his character and his life.” – Sandor Marai, Embers “The words we read and words we write never say exactly what we mean. The people we love are never just as we desire them. The two symbola never perfectly match. Eros is in between.” ...

Sometimes you just want to hear these flipping sound. Here is the code for both Flip 7-segment digits and FlipDot. FlipDigits FlipDots Another interesting thing is LED display of tixy.land. Rust FFI and cbindgen: integrating embedded rust code in C. Distinguishing an interpreter from a compiler, Jan 26, 2023. This leads to the excellent course, UCB CS294-113: Virtual machine and managed runtimes.

Patrick Yang is a technical director at WCH. 南京沁恒 Here are some links. openwch github RISC-V based microcontrollers. CH32V003 32bit 48MHz 16KB flash, it is less than $0.5 for example. Arduino-wch58x. Another CH32V project. Flipping dots Kicad panelizing tool KiKit. This 3D printing uses UTR-8100 transparent amterial, from PCBWay.

“The Oprah-approved bestseller with three simple tenets: Science is fake, attitude causes everything and poor people don’t want to be rich.” Read this thread.

Nils Gilman pinned one tweet: People say adversity reveals character, but I say if you really want to know a man, give hime power. Rosa Luxemburg: “In effect, every legal constitution is the product of a revolution.” Every legal constitution is the product of a revolution. In the history of classes, revolution is the act of political creation, while legislation is the political expression of the life of a society that has already come into being. Work for reform does not contain its own force independent from revolution. During every historic period, work for reforms is carried on only in the direction given to it by the impetus of the last revolution and continues as long as the impulsion from the last revolution continues to make itself felt. Or, to put it more concretely, in each historic period work for reforms is carried on only in the framework of the social form created by the last revolution. Here is the kernel of the problem. It is contrary to history to represent work for reforms as a long-drawn out revolution and revolution as a condensed series of reforms. A social transformation and a legislative reform do not differ according to their duration but according to their content. The secret of historic change through the utilisation of political power resides precisely in the transformation of simple quantitative modification into a new quality, or to speak more concretely, in the passage of an historic period from one given form of society to another. Listen to this from Aldous Huxley. In 1958 he predicted a form of dictatorship that would rely not on force, but propaganda - and addiction. Here are some great notes on physics. It is made by Prof David Tong at University of Cambridge. If you are intrested in theoretical physics. Enjoy it. ...

The new US congress is still voting for its next speaker. From former speaker John Boehner, “What they’re really interested in is chaos. …They want to throw sand in the gears of the hated federal government until it fails and they’ve finally proved that it’s beyond saving. Every time they vote down a bill, they get another invitation to go on Fox News or talk radio. It’s a narcissistic – and dangerous – feedback loop.” ...

Start to read the condensed biography of Dostoevsky by Joseph Frank. This is to understand Dostoevsky’s works correctly with its political context of 19th century Russia. To read Dostoevsky, you have to understand the context. Two nice tweets from Steve Stewart-Williams. One is the brain. The other Physics is weird. Another thing is geometry in p5js in this github repo. Beautiful geometric shapes generated by code.

There are a few writers I love. Betrand Russell is one of them. “The idea that the poor should have leisure has always been shocking to the rich. In the early nineteenth century, fifteen hours was the ordinary day’s work for a man; children sometimes did as much, and very commonly did twelve hours a day. When meddlesome busybodies suggested that perhaps these hours were rather long, they were told that work kept adults from drink and children from mischief. ...