just spent 2 weeks in china. went into it thinking we're cooked. came back more bullish on america than ever. here's why:
1. chinese citizens are way more chronically online. on the subway, train, anywhere, literally everyone is glued to their phone. gaming, short form, wechat. "don't walk and look at your phone, it's dangerous!" announcements flood crowded areas. their tiktok isn't any better, its still garbage, soft-core porn, etc.
2. everyone's using AI — deepseek, kimi, doubao. but nobody's afraid of losing their job to it. here it feels like there's an existential crisis every week. in china, nothing. i think the CCP won't let companies mass-layoff workers. great for short-term stability. terrible for long-term competitiveness on a global scale.
3. china doesn't produce weirdos. i sat in on a class at tsinghua (china's MIT). not one student spoke unless the professor read their name out loud. no questions. no debate. chinese education produces world-class executors, not contrarians. it does make it a safer place to live though.
4. china doesn't have christianity but it has something america doesn't have: a shared story everyone believes in. every person age 25-70 watched their country go from abject poverty to skyscrapers in one lifetime. that kind of collective proof has a deep unifying effect. compare that to how divided we are right now. america has a huge meaning vacuum that needs to be filled.
nevertheless, i return back to my home in america reinvigorated. because everything i saw confirms one thing: china optimizes. america innovates. and the innovators always win.
After a stressful day at the hospital, I very much look forward to getting in my Tesla, sitting back, relaxing, and enjoying the ride home. Especially on busy highways. I feel bad for folks that haven’t tried FSD and have no idea how amazing this feels. 😌
While you slept last night, completely motionless in your bed, our galaxy shifted millions of kilometers through the cosmos.
You woke up in the same room, on the same planet, but unimaginably far from where you were the night before.
The Milky Way does not glide silently through the universe. It is racing through space at about 600 kilometers per second, carrying with it billions of stars, planets, and everything they contain on the journey. It is a good reminder that, even when life seems motionless, you are always in motion.
A Turkish proverb says, “If a father bathes his children, both will laugh, and if a son bathes his father, both will cry.” Such is the painful beauty of life, where love comes full circle with time.