The Wave, ca. 1869 by Gustave Courbet

another rainy day. i prefer the rain. finished reading joshua. went to the chinese service, the pastor talked about the pentecost. D invited the church for lunch at kam lok, the food was so good. cleaned the house and went out for a photography walk at ferry building. it's a foggy day, the pictures are painted with a tone of mystery and ominous atmosphere.

1. America Doesn't Know Tofu
   • constraints lead to innovations (chinese buddhists tradition of not killing animals nurtured plants into satiating meat-free meals).
   • the unbelievable diversity of vegan foods in China
   • there are 20 types of tofu
     • leave soy curds to be -> silken tofu
     • spoon them into mold, press out some water -> soft, firm, think tofu sheets
     • smoke, dehydrate, ferment, alkali-treat -> new varieties
     • cook soy protein with fat, starch, seasoning -> fishcake-like tofu
   • tofu is not just an ingredient, it's an entire category of protein
   • a doctrine of economic development: "rising income increases demand for meat"
   • "chinese people don’t reject common vegetarian foods because there is something fundamentally more valuable about meat. they do so because of perceived value — associations of plants with poverty and meat with prosperity"
   • this fact is lost on animal advocates in the West, billions of dollars poured into dairy-free and meat-free products won't succeed on cost, taste, and convenience; they need to win on perceived value.
2. My Path to OpenAI – Greg Brockman
   • Turing’s Computing Machinery and Intelligence
   • "I decided that it didn’t make sense to try to do a startup while still in school. Instead, I was going to meet with people doing startups, and over time pattern match what works and what doesn’t"
   • "sometimes an effort needs only someone bold enough to pronounce a goal, and then the right people will join them"
   • Alan Kay quote, “the best way to predict the future is to invent it
   • "An attractive feature of deep learning is that it is largely domain independent: many of the insights learned in one domain apply in other domains" – Ilya
3. The Power of Prayer
   • "prayer as collaborative problem-solving with God"
   • ex: "He began his prayer by describing the problem he’s facing: mornings are tricky for him. He identifies his goal state: he wants to feel happy and not anxious in the mornings. And he makes a plan, saying he wants to ‘find ways to meet God in the mornings’ and works backward to determine that he needs to find a new morning routine"
   • prayer helps people understand problems and changed their perspective on problems, make a plan, give a clear sense of what action to take after praying and motivation to tackle them
   • in an experiment between prayer and thinking aloud (both similar in the the phases of problem-solving), people who pray feels more relief
   • prayer has psychological benefits, it reduces anxiety, heightens gratitude and wellbeing, or can make people more resilient
   • prayer is not just a quiet moment in the day, a time to ask for God for blessings, or an opportunity to remind yourself of your values, and what God wants for you. it's a cognitice practice chockfull of problem-solving resources.
4. DeepSeek, unstacked
   • $5.6 million is probably only the last training run, but is still impressive – Nathan Lambert
   • "High-Flyer’s ample coffers allow DeepSeek “to focus on research and exploration rather than vertical domains and applications" – Liang Wenfeng
   • Unlike China’s leading battery and solar companies, DeepSeek’s funding was all private. “DeepSeek’s success arose not because of China’s innovation system but in spite of it. – JS Tan
   • the more computing power you have, the faster you can innovate. chip sanctions are still an effective means of maintaining a US lead. “While export controls may have some negative side effects, the overall impact has been slowing China’s ability to scale up AI. – Miles Brundage on ChinaTalk
   • "AI might feel magical in its frictionlessness, but (human) writing—like walking—is valuable because of the friction"
5. What is simple web design?
   • a collection of quotes from various people on what simple design means. it is content-first, timeless, materially honest, wordy, and more. it comes with a list of examples.
6. Alice’s Adventures in a differentiable wonderland
   • a primer on designing neural newtorks, a.k.a. differentiable models. from math preliminaries and datasets to convolutional, attentional, and recurrent blocks, it's a great book with beautiful graphics and formulas.
7. Principles by Nabeel
   • "the most important life lessons you learn are the hardest to communicate to others"