chorpharn

[Kyle Chan @kyleichan]

Very cool map. China doesn’t have a single “Silicon Valley” but networked regional clusters.

[James Lucas @JamesLucasIT]

This is one of the most beloved paintings in America, and it puts its finger on something we all pass through, first as the child, and one day as the parent left behind...

The painting is Breaking Home Ties, by Norman Rockwell, on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post in 1954. A father and his teenage son sit side by side on the running board of a battered farm truck, waiting at a railway stop. A single track runs along the bottom of the picture. A ticket pokes from the boy's pocket. His suitcase is stacked with schoolbooks and wears a "State U" pennant. The train is coming to carry him off to college, away from home, for the first time in his life.

Everything is in the way they sit.

The son sits upright, scrubbed and dressed in his best, eyes fixed on the horizon, on the track, on the future rushing toward him. He is already half gone. For him that train is the beginning of everything.

His father sits beside him in worn work clothes and scuffed boots, looking the other way, down the line, as if he cannot bear to watch it arrive. The same train means the opposite thing to him. For the son it is the start of a life. For the father it is the day the house grows quieter, the chair at the table sits empty, and the person he built his world around walks out into a life that no longer has him at its centre.

Look at his hands. He is holding two hats. His own battered one, and resting on top of it, his son's crisp new one, held carefully together, because it is the last small thing he can still do for the boy...

And then the dog, its head laid in the son's lap, gazing up, refusing to look away. Rockwell knew exactly what that was for: "The father couldn't show how he felt about the boy's leaving," he said. "The dog did."

It has moved people for 70 years because every leaving is a beginning for one person and an ending for another. The child steps out into the world, as they should. And someone stays behind, watching them go, and loving them enough to let them go anyway...

[Zichen Wang @ZichenWanghere]

then everyone forgets or at least obscures, as the report does, all the unfounded claims from the Trump admin about Chinese soldiers in Panama that were fact checked and debunked by everyone from NYT to BBC which is an integral, fundamental, and initiating part of the debacle

[Teortaxes▶️ (DeepSeek 推特🐋铁粉 2023 – ∞) @teortaxesTex]

@EugeneSmarts That’s also an improvement over 天高皇帝遠

[Zichen Wang @ZichenWanghere]

masterstroke

[Yang Fan 范阳 @Yang_Supertramp]

And this new model shouldn’t simply take the form of another private academic institution or gallery/museum. The new gen won’t buy into the old playbook, they’re too smart and naturally rebellious, and know how much vanity and inconsistency in the existing system.

[chorpharn @chorpharn]

Distilling myself and the machines note that I want the great civilisational question, and the embroidered collar.

[Bruno Maçães @MacaesBruno]

What is remarkable is that China regards LLMs as a side quest and was still able to beat the US, which regards them as nec plus ultra

[Rui Ma @ruima]

As mentioned many times before, once you get renewable energy to a low enough cost, you can actually produce green fuel at scale, this is potentially a ten year timeline not that long (5 for carbon subsidized shipping lines)

[chorpharn @chorpharn]

未覺池塘春草夢，階前梧葉已秋聲。

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

"I embrace you with my whole heart."

Shortly after he became the second-youngest laureate of the Nobel Prize, Albert Camus sent his childhood teacher this almost unbearably beautiful letter of gratitude: https://t.co/nQnyWxEbLO

[Maria Popova @themarginalian]

How to live and how to die https://t.co/qCrDo2VexL

[Choen Lee @ahchoen]

#seabling fights back

From Strait Times:

'The running club faced backlash from locals after it emerged that Indonesians had allegedly been barred from participating.

'“There should not be a state within a state. We consider this running club to be functioning as a ‘state within a state’,” said Hendarsam.

'Hendarsam added that the duo violated immigration laws by organising an event in Indonesia without the required permits.'

[Bryan Cheong @bryancsk]

I think Southeast Asian governments in general have been a bit too tolerant of foreign bad behaviour like this

[Paul Graham @paulg]

We have multiple reasons for wanting to believe nurture is more important than nature and none for wanting to believe the opposite (unless we = the far right, which we ≠), so it's not surprising we overestimate its effect. But man are kids' personalities inborn.

[asparagoid @asparagoid]

People have argued cats VS dogs forever, but I've always been unimpressed with the arguments both sides put forward

Cats are far superior

I'll explain exactly why. Cats sit at the exact optimum of pet-ness because every attribute they have stops before it becomes a problem

Cats possess the exact amount of intelligence that is useful in a pet. They can understand where to pee/poop. They can feed themselves. They can avoid danger and distinguish humans. They can learn to communicate a small number of specific needs

That's enough. Beyond and under this, animal intelligence becomes progressively more useless and annoying

For instance, parrots require a lot of active mental stimulation. They can learn language, hold grudges, but the counterpoint is that they can also be a complete nightmare or get depressed (literally plucking out their own feathers in an act of despair) without stimulation. Conversely, certain small animals are so insanely stupid that they pee everywhere, eat everything and cannot be trained

Dogs are a little more intelligent than cats, but it's focussed in an extremely demanding way. Their intelligence makes them able to learn a huge about of tricks, but it also makes them demanding, stubborn, conscious of power dynamics. It gives them a desire for exploration, companionship and stimulation

Cats are absolutely content exploring 1 house and garden forever without needing the owner to do anything or create a curriculum of daily activities and stimulation

Yes, dogs are more affectionate than cats, but it's not at all obvious that maximizing this attribute makes an optimal pet. Dogs move past affection into dependence, which means they experience severe distress in your absence, need a great deal of reassurance and their mood is either made or broken by the presence and active attention of the owner. Anyone man who has dated a BPD woman understands the extreme inner suffering they experience when you temporarily focus attention away from them. Dogs are highly similar in this regard

Cats occupy the exact point before affection becomes an essential duty. Yes they seek out physical touch, warmth, like you and want to be around you. But they can also tolerate hours or days of absolutely nothing. Actually, most cats are even content just glancing at you from across the room, without the need for you to direct your own attention at them. This is the optimal amount of love, without dependence, if you actually want to have a high functioning life with a pet, and aren't a loser who is making your pet the child you never had

In terms of exercise, dog walks must become a permanent 1X or 2X daily task in a humans calendar regardless of the weather or how the human feels. If you work out the total amount of time wasted across a lifetime, it amounts to years of opportunity cost spent walking in bad weather and scooping up poop. Cats exercise themselves with zero time obligation. Easy win here

Size wise, cats are optimally sized. They're large enough to feel substantial and warm when held with both hands, but small enough that they can be easily moved or thrown around. Pretty much all cats are in the same weight range, but even the fattest ones are easily handled

The spread of dog sizes is way to wide-ranging. Some are way too small and ridiculous (handbag dogs, etc). Some can easily take the lives of unarmed men, and require a huge amount of control maintenance capable of attacking them/others or pulling them into oncoming traffic. Likewise, even relatively small dogs can be extremely strong and dangerous to women or children

Evolution wise, another way to see this is that domestic cats found an optimal size and just stayed there. Dogs are still experimenting wildly, showing they haven't managed to optimize

In terms of communication, animals need to communicate some needs, but overcommunicating is incredibly annoying. Cats effectively only communicate hunger and the desire to go outside, then stop when the request is fulfilled. Dogs usually relentlessly monitor and loudly respond a huge multitude of pointless events, like distant cars, footsteps, far away animals, random noises, people outside the door, etc. Pretty much all of this information was already known to the owner and having a 2nd external creature alert you about what's already happening is both totally pointless and in the case of barking, incredibly annoying

For washing / hygiene, cats need nothing. They lick themselves regularly and if trained well, bury their own poop or cover it with litter. Dogs have to be taken outside, scooped up after and also require proper washes by humans. In essence, a cats body is its own responsibility, whereas a dog hands over basic self-care to the human, despite having even greater intelligence than a cat

In terms of emotions and sociability, dogs are like resonant tuning forks reflecting the general atmosphere of the home or environment. Sometimes this is okay, but mostly it's annoying. If the owner of a dog is stressed, the dog will get stressed, necessitating the owner now inheriting the task of comforting the dog

In the same situation with a cat, the cat usually either doesn't care, or just leaves the room. They rarely require any direct comfort due to others states around them, nor do they ever get truly destabilized unless you actively chase them nonstop or pursue them with a water bucket. Cats have their own emotional rhythm, which is extremely useful if you already have a full life or high stress. It also means they can be a direct comfort to you when it matters, rather than a needy dependent child

If you look at individual traits, you could argue that dogs are "better" than cats. But when you look with specificity at these exact traits, you will find that they each create far more obligation for the owner. Whereas no cat trait ever exceeds the point that it becomes burdensome

So cats aren't particularly high IQ, nor particularly obedient, nor that social, nor energetic, nor are they maxxed out on any particular trait. But what they do have is the optimal level of every single one of these traits, stopping right before the point it would become annoying. If you shifted any attribute up or down slightly, it would quickly become a problem

But as they are, cats sit at the exact balance point of optimal pet-ness

[墨鱼(:◎) @MoYU_7777]

最近cos届出现了一名宠粉的博主，cos粉丝们给她起了一个绰号：人民的兔娘

所以为什么总有人说兔娘在培养死士，我说白了，她那种掏心掏肺的劲儿实在太像了。

兔娘有一种上辈子当了一辈子单身宅男，这辈子终于转生成了美少女的感觉。

漫展主办方经常掉链子，很多粉丝买了VIP票还是抢不到签售名额，换做别人最多道个歉。

人家兔娘呢，自掏腰包买奶茶买快餐，一份份塞到远道而来的粉丝手里。

签售会128元的门票，含合影，含互动，不额外收一分钱，全程笑着营业，主动配合，平等对待每一个人，同行的cos合影加价，摆拍早退，敷衍了事。

一边是躲着你生怕多接触一秒的其他网红，一边是怕你饿着给你递麦当劳的兔娘。

全世界都在教男生要负责任要多付出，只有兔娘让你觉得原来男生也值得被好好对待，抓衣领，摸脸，眨眼，放电，这一套组合拳真没几个人扛得住。

[Yang Fan 范阳 @Yang_Supertramp]

Balancing my time between the Chinese and English internet daily, curating reads with the eye of an art collector and the rigor of a scientist.

Opening this thread to share my curations, which are the most interesting gems & high quality contents from the Chinese internet: 🧵

[老季 @XiaoJi0403]

网友把各类安装师傅们约在同一天，本以为场面会失控，没想到处处是惊喜…

[Michael Guo @Michaelzsguo]

国内和国外学校在王虹获奖后给出的评价可谓是截然不同。

北大教授/同学对王虹的评价：
不是竞赛生，不是最亮眼的，班上小透明，但是及其自律，勤奋，肯下苦功，靠长期坚持实现逆袭。

MIT博导评价王虹: 具有慢而深的研究特质，不被传统束缚，能创新方法找到前人未发现的突破口

巴黎理工学院老师评价王虹：直觉罕见，远超同年级所有学生，快速攻克超纲难题
是及其罕见的天赋，韧性，思维深度拉满的学生。

北大的教授，评价王虹仍然是从她没有竞赛背景出发，没有天赋，强调她是靠勤奋实现“逆袭”
美国和法国的导师都盛赞王虹的天赋异禀，思维深度，直觉，和韧性。