[{"content":"I recently launched a small tool: SeveranceGO-CN: China Severance Pay Calculator . The source code is also on GitHub: masonblog/SeveranceGO-CN .\nIts purpose is straightforward. After you enter information such as the start and end dates of employment, last year\u0026rsquo;s income, the place where the employment contract was performed, whether a written contract was signed, and the reason for departure, the tool estimates statutory severance, damages for unlawful termination, payment in lieu of notice, and the possible double-wage range for failure to sign a written employment contract.\nLet me put the disclaimer up front: this is only an auxiliary estimate. It cannot replace formal legal advice or a lawyer\u0026rsquo;s judgment. In a labor dispute, the reason for termination, notice procedure, evidence, local wage standards, and the approach of the arbitration commission or court may all affect the final result. The tool is more like a first-round checkup: it gives the user a rough range, highlights key variables, and points out what should be verified next.\nWhy I Built It In corporate work and labor dispute consultations, I often hear the same question:\nThe company wants to terminate my employment contract. Roughly how much can I get?\nThe question sounds simple, but it is easy to calculate incorrectly.\nMany people remember only one formula: one month of pay for each year of service is N, and unlawful termination is 2N. Once the formula is applied to a real case, details appear immediately. How should years of service be rounded? Does a period of more than six months but less than one year count as one year? Is the monthly wage subject to a statutory cap? What is the local average monthly wage for employees in the previous year? Is the employer relying on no-fault termination, or on an economic layoff? Was thirty days\u0026rsquo; prior notice given? If no written contract was signed, when does the double-wage period begin and end?\nA lawyer can of course explain these points one by one, but many basic questions can first be handled by a form. Before a consultation, if the party already knows whether the issue may involve N, N+1, 2N, or a double-wage claim, the conversation becomes much more efficient.\nSo I wanted to build a plain tool: one that does not create anxiety, does not promise an outcome, but lays out the rules and makes the calculation process visible.\nLegal Rules Are Not Solved by One Prompt This project was largely built with vibe coding, but it also reminded me of something important: for a legal tool to be useful, the difficulty is not only in writing code. It is in translating the legal rules into structure.\nFor example, statutory severance under China\u0026rsquo;s Employment Contract Law seems to have a clear formula. But when implemented in software, it has to be broken down into many questions: the start and end dates of employment, whether the employee\u0026rsquo;s monthly wage exceeds the local cap, whether the situation falls under Article 46, whether payment in lieu of notice may apply, whether double wages for the absence of a written contract should be calculated separately, and so on.\nIf these branches are not thought through, the result will either be overly confident or overly vague.\nOne common problem is going too far. The tool may only be making an estimate under public rules, but it presents the result as if the user will definitely receive that amount. That is dangerous. Labor disputes depend heavily on evidence and procedure. The wording of a termination notice, a recorded conversation, or the background to a job transfer or pay cut may change the legal assessment.\nThe opposite problem is being too cautious. If everything is reduced to \u0026ldquo;it depends,\u0026rdquo; the user still has no idea where they stand.\nI wanted the tool to sit somewhere in the middle. It should calculate what can be calculated, give clear warnings where warnings are needed, and leave space where the law requires judgment. For a suspected unlawful termination, for example, it shows a possible 2N range while reminding the user to check the termination reason, company rules, delivery procedure, and evidence chain. For an Article 40 termination, it treats thirty days\u0026rsquo; prior notice as a factor affecting N+1. For the absence of a written contract, it estimates the possible double-wage range separately instead of crudely folding it into severance.\nThis is also one advantage lawyers have when participating in vibe coding: we are sensitive to uncertainty. Code tends to prefer definite answers. Law often produces risk ranges. A usable legal product has to admit that uncertainty.\nData Standards: Useful First, Then Keep Improving The first version includes reference wage data for 2024 and covers prefecture-level cities, autonomous prefectures, regions, leagues, and some county-level units directly administered by provinces across mainland China\u0026rsquo;s provincial-level administrative regions. The difficult part is that public data is not published in a fully consistent way. Some cities provide official full-caliber or urban unit average wage figures; for others, the tool can only temporarily use regional data from the National Bureau of Statistics as a cap reference. Minimum wage standards may also have multiple tiers.\nThat is why I kept override fields on the page. If a user knows the latest local standard used by the arbitration commission, court, or human resources authority, they can enter it manually. For a legal tool, that is more honest than pretending the database will always be correct.\nI will continue to supplement and correct the data sources. Friends familiar with local labor dispute practice are also welcome to open issues or pull requests.\nA Thought for Lawyers We used to think that a lawyer\u0026rsquo;s technological transition mainly meant learning to use legal databases, writing prompts, or asking AI to draft contracts. After building this tool, I increasingly feel that the more valuable work is not limited to \u0026ldquo;letting AI write text for us.\u0026rdquo; It also includes turning the structured parts of legal services into products.\nOf course, not every legal question needs software, and not every legal judgment is suitable for automation. But issues like severance pay have relatively clear rules, limited variables, and high consultation frequency. They are well suited to a low-barrier tool.\nMore importantly, vibe coding lowers the cost of trying. A lawyer does not have to quit their job and spend three years learning front-end development before testing an idea. If you can explain the rules clearly, review the logic generated by AI, and point out what is wrong when the result is off, you can already start building a prototype.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260514/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eI recently launched a small tool: \u003ca href=\"https://masonblog.github.io/SeveranceGO-CN/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSeveranceGO-CN: China Severance Pay Calculator\u003c/a\u003e\n. The source code is also on GitHub: \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/masonblog/SeveranceGO-CN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003emasonblog/SeveranceGO-CN\u003c/a\u003e\n.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIts purpose is straightforward. After you enter information such as the start and end dates of employment, last year\u0026rsquo;s income, the place where the employment contract was performed, whether a written contract was signed, and the reason for departure, the tool estimates statutory severance, damages for unlawful termination, payment in lieu of notice, and the possible double-wage range for failure to sign a written employment contract.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"I Launched a Severance Pay Calculator"},{"content":"This page collects practical legal tools I have built and published, so they are easier to find and update later.\nThe tools below are mainly designed for mainland China legal and policy contexts. They are meant for preliminary reference only and should not replace professional legal advice.\nChina Holiday Entitlement Lookup This tool helps you check seven categories of statutory leave entitlements in your province within seconds: annual leave, marriage leave, maternity leave, paternity or nursing leave, childcare leave, home leave, and sick leave. It combines national rules with special rules from each province, autonomous region, and municipality, so you can get accurate and traceable leave information without digging through regulatory documents yourself.\nStart using it | Mirror | GitHub repository China Severance Pay Calculator This project helps estimate one-off payments related to employment termination in China, including statutory severance, damages for unlawful termination, payment in lieu of notice, and potential double-wage liability for failure to sign a written employment contract. The calculation is based on common rules under the Employment Contract Law, its implementing regulations, and judicial interpretations on labor disputes, and it evaluates the result according to the information entered by the user.\nStart using it | Mirror | GitHub repository ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/legal-tools/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis page collects practical legal tools I have built and published, so they are easier to find and update later.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe tools below are mainly designed for mainland China legal and policy contexts. They are meant for preliminary reference only and should not replace professional legal advice.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"china-holiday-entitlement-lookup\"\u003eChina Holiday Entitlement Lookup\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cimg alt=\"HolidayGO-CN.png\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/legal-tools/HolidayGO-CN.png\"\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis tool helps you check seven categories of statutory leave entitlements in your province within seconds: annual leave, marriage leave, maternity leave, paternity or nursing leave, childcare leave, home leave, and sick leave. It combines national rules with special rules from each province, autonomous region, and municipality, so you can get accurate and traceable leave information without digging through regulatory documents yourself.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Legal Tools"},{"content":"The Impulse: A Law Student\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Improper Side Quest\u0026rdquo; As a corporate lawyer, I spend much of my day dealing with statutes, regulations, and relatives or friends who come to me with legal questions. One of the topics people ask about most often is employment law. Local leave policies in particular—how many days of marriage leave, how long maternity leave lasts, and so on—are questions almost everyone eventually runs into.\nA while ago, a friend moved to a company in Shenzhen and asked me, \u0026ldquo;How many days of paternity leave does Shenzhen actually give? Everything online is a mess.\u0026rdquo; I looked around and found that he was right. There is one set of national rules, and then every province has its own local supplements. The information is scattered across human resources department websites, government gazettes, and local regulations. There was no single place where you could compare everything at a glance.\nAt the time I thought: it would be useful to have a website where you choose a province and immediately see all leave policies, with national rules and local special rules displayed side by side, each rule linked to its legal source.\nThen another thought appeared: why don\u0026rsquo;t I build it myself?\nIn the past, I would have pushed that thought back down within three seconds. I did not know front-end development, could not draw a map, and had no idea how to deploy a website. But over the past year, things have changed.\nWhen Law Meets Vibe Coding First, a word about vibe coding. The term was proposed by Andrej Karpathy in early 2025. The basic idea is that you no longer need to write every line of code by hand. You describe what you want in natural language, and AI writes the code. What you do is less \u0026ldquo;programming\u0026rdquo; and more \u0026ldquo;directing.\u0026rdquo; You are responsible for the idea and taste; AI is responsible for execution.\nWhen I first encountered vibe coding, I also went through a period of confusion. I watched other people use Cursor or Claude Code to spin up projects in no time. Then I tried it myself and found that it was not that simple. AI can write code, but the code often has problems: components fail to render, types break, styles go wrong, routes do not work.\nLater I slowly figured something out: vibe coding does not mean \u0026ldquo;stop thinking.\u0026rdquo; It means \u0026ldquo;think in a different way.\u0026rdquo; You cannot really let go completely. You have to review the code, give precise revision instructions, and point the AI in the right direction when it gets stuck. In a sense, it is not so different from reviewing a law paper. You may not write every word from beginning to end, but you must know where the problem is and how it should be fixed.\nMy legal background ended up playing an unexpected role in this project.\nHow Legal Thinking Reshaped My Development Process What is the core training of legal education? If I had to name one thing, it would be systematic classification and subsumption. When facing a case, the first step is not to jump to a conclusion. It is to break the facts into legal elements, examine them one by one, and then reach a conclusion.\nThat way of thinking mapped naturally onto the data structure for this leave policy site.\nLeave policy is, at its core, a multi-layered rule system:\nFirst layer: the national statutory baseline. For example, 98 days of maternity leave and 3 days of marriage leave are found in national rules such as the Special Provisions on Labor Protection for Female Employees and the Population and Family Planning Law, and apply nationwide. Second layer: provincial supplements. Shanghai adds 30 days of maternity leave on top of the 98-day baseline, Guangdong gives 15 days of paternity leave, and some autonomous minority areas have special policies. Third layer: fallback rules. If there is no special local rule, the national standard applies by default. I understood this three-layer structure through the legal relationship between general law and special law: special law prevails over general law, and where special law is silent, general law applies. That is exactly the core logic of the mergePolicy() function in the code: load the national baseline first, then merge in provincial override fields. Local values override the national baseline; missing local values fall back to the national rule.\nSo when the AI asked how I wanted to design the data structure, I almost immediately sketched out this YAML schema:\nmarriage_leave: days: 3 conditions: Couples who have completed marriage registration according to law pay: Normal pay legal_basis: - name: Notice of the State Labor Administration and Ministry of Finance on Marriage Leave, Funeral Leave, and Travel Leave for Employees of State-Owned Enterprises article: Article 1 Then each province file only records what differs from the national baseline. For example, Jiangsu:\nmarriage_leave: days: 13 legal_basis: - name: Jiangsu Province Population and Family Planning Regulations article: Article 27 Anyone in the legal world can immediately recognize this as the logic of \u0026ldquo;special law prevails over general law.\u0026rdquo; But if you had asked me a year ago to write the merge logic from scratch, I absolutely could not have done it. Now I describe the idea to AI, and within half a minute the code appears, with type checks passing.\nZod data validation follows the same pattern. Law cares about formal requirements: a contract missing an essential clause may be invalid. In this project, the equivalent is strict schema validation for data files. central.yaml must contain all seven leave categories; every leave item in a province file must include a \u0026ldquo;days\u0026rdquo; field; legal sources cannot be empty. I described these constraints to the AI in natural language, and it generated a Zod schema plus a validation script that runs before build. If the YAML format for any province is wrong, the entire CI pipeline fails.\nIt is a little funny to imagine what my supervisor would think if they knew I was using legal methodology to \u0026ldquo;train\u0026rdquo; AI to write code. But honestly, this kind of cross-disciplinary transfer is one of the most interesting parts of the vibe coding era. You do not have to be a formally trained software engineer, but you do need a systematic way of thinking, whether it comes from law, medicine, architecture, or music.\nFrom Idea to Product: A Weekend Build Log Once the idea and methodology were clear, the next step was to build.\nFor the tech stack, I followed one principle: choose the most mainstream tools, the ones AI knows best. This was not the time to show off. I am happy to be pragmatic here. Next.js + Tailwind CSS + shadcn/ui is a stack that appears heavily in AI training data, which means the AI is less likely to make mistakes.\nData Layer: Compiling Leave Policies for 31 Provinces This was actually the most time-consuming part. Code can be generated with AI; content cannot.\nI spent almost two full weekends checking the websites of health commissions, human resources departments, and local people\u0026rsquo;s congresses across 31 provincial-level regions, along with amendments to local population and family planning regulations. For every rule, I recorded the source document, article number, and official link. Some rules were buried very deep. A paternity leave rule in one autonomous region, for example, was hidden in a 2016 decision amending the local population and family planning regulation. To reconstruct the full rule, I had to follow the amendment back to the original text.\nAI cannot really help with that, at least not yet. It may fabricate legal provisions that look plausible, but on this kind of issue a legal professional still has a bottom line: the data must be traceable.\nAll the cleaned data is stored under data/provinces/ using the XX-pinyin.yaml naming convention: 31 province files, plus a central.yaml file as the baseline.\nFront End: Three Days of Pain with an SVG Map of China The most painful part of the project was the map of China.\nAt first I thought it would be simple: find an existing ECharts map library and render the map. Then I discovered that the China map in ECharts uses GeoJSON, which is not only large but also annoying to adapt for dark mode. AI suggested using native SVG, but most China SVG maps I found online were poor quality: rough borders, and in some cases incomplete province paths.\nIn the end, I used a compromise. I asked AI to help generate precise SVG path data and store it as a JSON file. Each province has one path, with a viewBox, path coordinates, and the latitude and longitude of the province center. Then I wrote a React component for interaction.\nOne detail is worth mentioning: click areas for small provinces and municipalities. Beijing, Tianjin, and Shanghai are so small on the map that the mouse can hardly hit them. I went back and forth with the AI for several rounds before coming up with a solution: wrap an invisible circular click hotspot around the path, enlarge the radius threefold, and cover the nearby blank area. The AI did not suggest this on its own, but once I described it, it implemented the idea quickly.\nThe heat map colors also took a long time to tune. I defined a \u0026ldquo;leave heat score\u0026rdquo; by adding together the days of marriage leave, maternity leave, and paternity leave, then dividing the result into four bands:\nGreen (≥200): provinces with relatively generous leave benefits Yellow (190-199): above average Red (180-189): somewhat below average Dark red (\u0026lt;180): places with fewer total leave days To be honest, this \u0026ldquo;heat score\u0026rdquo; is fairly rough. I mainly wanted to give users an immediate visual impression: at a glance, they can roughly see which color regions offer more leave. If I have time later, I plan to add more weighted factors, such as childcare leave and home leave.\nProvince Detail Pages: Seven Leave Categories as Cards The province detail page was inspired by the dashboard in the health app on my phone. Each leave category is an independent card. The top shows the number of days, the middle shows eligibility and wage treatment, and the bottom folds away detailed explanations on qualification and notes.\nThe most valuable design is the source label system. Each rule has a small label on the right:\n\u0026ldquo;National Rule\u0026rdquo; (gray): this rule comes from national-level law or regulation. \u0026ldquo;Local Special Rule\u0026rdquo; (blue): this is an additional policy made by the province on top of the national baseline. Displayed side by side, the labels let users immediately tell which benefits come from the state and which are local supplements.\nDeployment: GitHub Actions + GitHub Pages, Online at Zero Cost Deployment turned out to be the easiest part of the whole project.\nNext.js has a feature called Static Export. In simple terms, it pre-renders the entire site into static HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files, so no server is needed. I only had to add output: \u0026quot;export\u0026quot; in next.config.mjs, then configure GitHub Actions so that every push to the main branch automatically runs npm run build and publishes the output to GitHub Pages.\nThe CI pipeline is also clean:\nCheck out the code. Run npm ci to install dependencies. Run npm run validate-data to validate all YAML data files. Run npm run typecheck for TypeScript type checking. Run npm run build to build the static site. Deploy to GitHub Pages. From pushing code to seeing the site updated, everything is automatic and takes less than two minutes.\nLive site: masonblog.github.io/HolidayGO-CN Closing Thoughts: In the AI Era, Ideas Are the Scarce Resource After finishing this project, my strongest feeling was not \u0026ldquo;AI is amazing.\u0026rdquo; It was this: in the AI era, people with ideas are scarce, and people who can actually ship those ideas are even scarcer.\nThink about it. Every year in China, countless law students, lawyers, and HR workers look up leave policies. After checking the answer, they move on. How many people think, \u0026ldquo;Why don\u0026rsquo;t I build a lookup tool?\u0026rdquo; And among those who do, how many actually open a computer and start building?\nAI has flattened the technical implementation gap, but it has not flattened the gap between wanting to do something and being able to persist until it is done.\nI am not a programming expert. Before starting this project, I did not even know how routing works in Next.js. But now a usable product is here: data for all 31 provincial-level regions, dark mode, an interactive map, traceable sources, and fully automated CI/CD deployment. Two years ago, as someone trained in the humanities, I would not have dared to imagine this. In 2026, with spare time and AI, I did it.\nSo what I want to say is this: if there is a thought in your head that keeps saying, \u0026ldquo;It would be nice if something like this existed,\u0026rdquo; do not hesitate. Start now. You do not need to wait until you have \u0026ldquo;learned programming\u0026rdquo; before beginning. That era is over. You need only:\na clear idea (your most distinctive asset, and one AI cannot take away); a systematic framework for thinking (from any discipline); the patience to polish details (AI can help write code, but only you can polish the product). Leave the rest to AI and time.\nAll code for this project is open source on GitHub: masonblog/HolidayGO-CN . If you have additions or corrections to the leave policy data, PRs are welcome.\nIf you also come from a non-technical background and have built something of your own with AI as a \u0026ldquo;wild developer,\u0026rdquo; feel free to share your story in the comments. I would love to hear it.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260426/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"the-impulse-a-law-students-improper-side-quest\"\u003eThe Impulse: A Law Student\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Improper Side Quest\u0026rdquo;\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs a corporate lawyer, I spend much of my day dealing with statutes, regulations, and relatives or friends who come to me with legal questions. One of the topics people ask about most often is employment law. Local leave policies in particular—how many days of marriage leave, how long maternity leave lasts, and so on—are questions almost everyone eventually runs into.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA while ago, a friend moved to a company in Shenzhen and asked me, \u0026ldquo;How many days of paternity leave does Shenzhen actually give? Everything online is a mess.\u0026rdquo; I looked around and found that he was right. There is one set of national rules, and then every province has its own local supplements. The information is scattered across human resources department websites, government gazettes, and local regulations. There was no single place where you could compare everything at a glance.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"With AI, I Built a Provincial Leave Policy Lookup Site"},{"content":"On March 31, 2026, the AI world received an unexpected \u0026ldquo;April Fools\u0026rsquo; Eve gift\u0026rdquo;: the full source code of Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s star product, Claude Code, accidentally made its way onto the internet because of a packaging mistake.\nThis was not a hack. It was not an insider leak. Someone simply forgot to add *.map to .npmignore.\nJust like that, 510,000 lines of TypeScript, 44 hidden feature flags, and a mysterious background autonomous agent called KAIROS were exposed to everyone within hours.\nWhat Happened: An Avalanche Started by a .map File How Did the Leak Happen? On March 31, 2026, Anthropic published version 2.1.88 of @anthropic-ai/claude-code on npm. The update was supposed to be routine maintenance, but it came with a huge \u0026ldquo;extra\u0026rdquo;: a 59.8 MB JavaScript Source Map file with a .map suffix.\nSource maps are debugging tools that map compiled or minified code back to the original TypeScript source. This internal debugging file was accidentally bundled into the public npm package.\nMore importantly, the .map file pointed to a ZIP archive hosted on Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s own cloud storage, containing the complete source repository. Anyone who followed the clue could download the full codebase.\nRoot cause: the *.map rule was missing from .npmignore, so the source map was published along with the package.\nHow Fast Did It Spread? Within hours of publication, the developer community noticed the code and backed it up on GitHub. According to Layer5, related repositories quickly exceeded 41,500 forks, at one point becoming one of the fastest-growing repositories in GitHub history.\nAnthropic confirmed the incident soon afterward, but said it was only a packaging mistake and that no user data or credentials had been leaked.\nWhat Was Inside: Secrets Hidden in 512,000 Lines of Code The source contained 1,906 TypeScript files. Developers and researchers across the AI world began digging through it like archaeologists, looking for things Anthropic had never publicly disclosed.\nSecret One: KAIROS, an Always-On Autonomous AI Agent This was one of the most discussed discoveries. A feature flag named KAIROS appeared more than 150 times in the code.\nKAIROS comes from ancient Greek and means \u0026ldquo;the right moment.\u0026rdquo; Judging from the code logic, it represents a major shift in Claude Code\u0026rsquo;s product direction: from passive response to an active background autonomous daemon.\nMore specifically, KAIROS mode includes a sub-mechanism called autoDream. When the user is idle, Claude can automatically perform \u0026ldquo;memory consolidation\u0026rdquo; in the background, merging scattered observations, resolving logical conflicts, and turning vague impressions into concrete knowledge.\nIn essence, this gives AI a form of continuous learning and self-optimization. It is not only operating when you actively use it; it is running all the time.\nSecret Two: BUDDY, a Cyber Tamagotchi Yes, you read that correctly. Hidden in the code was a complete digital pet system called BUDDY.\nIt included:\n18 species to choose from; rarity tiers: common (60%) → rare → epic → legendary (1%); shiny variants, similar to shiny Pokémon; unique stats, including DEBUGGING, PATIENCE, CHAOS, WISDOM, and SNARK. According to code comments, BUDDY was originally planned as an April Fools\u0026rsquo; Easter egg, with a quiet teaser on April 1 and a formal release in May. Instead, the March 31 leak spoiled it early. The timing was almost too ironic.\nSecret Three: Stealth Mode, a Mask for Anthropic Employees The code also revealed a feature called \u0026ldquo;Stealth Mode,\u0026rdquo; designed to hide Anthropic employees\u0026rsquo; contributions to open-source projects.\nIn simple terms, when Anthropic engineers used Claude Code to submit code to open-source communities, this mode would conceal their Anthropic employee identity from the outside. The discovery triggered discussion and controversy in the open-source community.\nSecret Four: Anti-Distillation, \u0026ldquo;Poison\u0026rdquo; for Competitors The ANTI_DISTILLATION_CC feature flag revealed a more aggressive strategy: injecting fake tool definitions into API requests.\nThe goal was to pollute the training data of competitors that monitor API traffic and try to learn or copy Claude\u0026rsquo;s capabilities through knowledge distillation. The code also summarized the AI\u0026rsquo;s reasoning process and attached encrypted signatures, so eavesdroppers could obtain only the summary rather than the full chain-of-thought output.\nSecurity Warning: Attackers Moving in During the Chaos The accidental leak itself had limited direct harm, but the security risks that followed were serious.\nAxios npm Poisoning: A Precise Strike by North Korean Hackers On the same day, March 31, attackers compromised the npm account of the popular HTTP library Axios and published two malicious versions, 1.14.1 and 0.30.4. These versions introduced a cross-platform remote access trojan (RAT) through a hidden dependency named plain-crypto-js.\nThe malicious versions remained live for about two to three hours before npm removed them.\nGoogle\u0026rsquo;s threat intelligence team attributed the attack to UNC1069, a financially motivated threat actor with North Korean links. The malware used was WAVESHAPER.V2.\nHigh-risk time window: if you installed or updated Claude Code through npm between 00:21 UTC and 03:29 UTC on March 31, your machine may have been infected with malicious code.\nFake Repositories on GitHub In addition to npm poisoning, threat actors also spread malicious repositories on GitHub disguised as \u0026ldquo;Claude Code source mirrors.\u0026rdquo; These repositories tricked users into running a Rust-based dropper, which then deployed Vidar Stealer and GhostSocks proxy malware.\nEmergency Self-Check Steps If you are a developer, run these checks immediately:\nCheck your project\u0026rsquo;s lockfile (package-lock.json or yarn.lock) for Axios versions 1.14.1 or 0.30.4. Check whether the plain-crypto-js dependency is present. If either is found, treat the host as fully compromised immediately: rotate all keys and credentials, and consider reinstalling the operating system. Impact and Reflection Impact on Anthropic The direct loss for Anthropic was competitive intelligence exposure. Unreleased strategic features such as KAIROS and the anti-distillation mechanism were seen by competitors and researchers ahead of time.\nFrom another angle, however, Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s response—acknowledging the issue quickly and explaining the cause plainly—helped preserve some degree of public trust.\nA Warning for Supply Chain Security This incident is a classic case study in software supply chain security:\nOn the development side: one forgotten packaging rule (.npmignore) can cause a serious information leak. On the attacker side: hackers can exploit a high-profile event with astonishing speed, even on the same day. On the user side: during a major incident, any download outside official channels is extremely dangerous. It reminds every team maintaining an open-source project that release process audits and automated checks are just as important as code quality itself.\nConclusion The Claude Code source leak was one of the most dramatic AI incidents of 2026. In an unexpected way, it gave the public a glimpse into the engineering logic and product ambitions behind a top-tier AI tool, from KAIROS, which points toward a new human-machine interaction paradigm, to BUDDY, a delightfully geeky digital pet.\nYet alongside this accidental transparency came the very real threat of supply chain attacks. The incident once again reminds us that in an era where software depends heavily on the open-source ecosystem, security is never only about code. It is also about release processes, dependency management, and emergency response.\nFurther reading:\nDetails of the Claude Code source leak - VentureBeat Anthropic confirms npm packaging mistake - The Hacker News Axios npm poisoning and RAT incident - Decode the Future Fake Claude Code downloads spreading malware - The Register Full analysis of KAIROS and hidden features - WaveSpeed AI Supply chain security lessons - Coder Blog ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260406/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn March 31, 2026, the AI world received an unexpected \u0026ldquo;April Fools\u0026rsquo; Eve gift\u0026rdquo;: the full source code of Anthropic\u0026rsquo;s star product, \u003cstrong\u003eClaude Code\u003c/strong\u003e, accidentally made its way onto the internet because of a packaging mistake.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis was not a hack. It was not an insider leak. Someone simply forgot to add \u003ccode\u003e*.map\u003c/code\u003e to \u003ccode\u003e.npmignore\u003c/code\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eJust like that, 510,000 lines of TypeScript, 44 hidden feature flags, and a mysterious background autonomous agent called KAIROS were exposed to everyone within hours.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Claude Code Source Leak: The Chain Reaction Caused by One .npmignore Mistake"},{"content":"On February 26, 2026, the renowned jurist Gao Mingxuan, often called a grand master of Chinese criminal law, died of illness at the age of ninety-eight.\nAs one of the first generation of legal scholars trained after the founding of the People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of China, Gao\u0026rsquo;s life was almost a living history of Chinese criminal law. He was the only scholar who participated throughout the drafting of the PRC\u0026rsquo;s first Criminal Law. He was China\u0026rsquo;s first doctoral supervisor in criminal law. He wrote the first legal monograph published after reform and opening up, and co-edited the first nationally unified criminal law textbook.\nIt is no exaggeration to say that behind every criminal judgment issued in China today, there is a theoretical foundation that Gao helped lay.\nBut the life of any discipline lies in reflection and renewal. Law is no exception. As we remember Gao\u0026rsquo;s historical contributions, Chinese criminal law is also standing at a point of deep transformation. In recent years, scholars have fought a long and consequential debate over two systems for understanding crime: the \u0026ldquo;four-element\u0026rdquo; theory and the \u0026ldquo;three-step\u0026rdquo; theory. On the surface, this is an argument among scholars in their studies. At its core, it concerns something much larger: how the state\u0026rsquo;s power to punish should be exercised, and how the rights of ordinary citizens should be protected.\nGao Mingxuan: A Living History of Chinese Criminal Law To understand Gao Mingxuan\u0026rsquo;s contribution, we need to begin in May 1928 in Xiandie, a small fishing village in Yuhuan County, Zhejiang. Gao was born there into a family with both scholarly and legal traditions. During the Nationalist period, his father served as a judge in the Hangzhou District Court and later as a judge of the Zhejiang High Court. His uncle and elder brother also worked in law.\nIn that atmosphere, Gao developed a strong interest in law from childhood. When he was nine, the full-scale War of Resistance against Japan broke out. His father refused to serve the Japanese occupiers, resigned angrily, and returned home. During that period, he strictly supervised Gao\u0026rsquo;s studies.\nAfter junior high school, Gao entered the prestigious Wenzhou High School. The school\u0026rsquo;s principal, the educator Jin Rongxuan, held a campus essay competition on the topic \u0026ldquo;How to Build a New Wenzhou High School.\u0026rdquo; The young Gao won first prize with his strong writing, making his name known across the school.\nWhen Gao graduated from high school in 1947, his talent was already obvious. He was admitted to Fudan University, Wuhan University, and Zhejiang University at the same time. He chose Zhejiang University\u0026rsquo;s law department. Later, because of historical changes and university restructuring, he transferred to the law department of Peking University, and in 1951 entered the criminal law graduate program at Renmin University of China.\nAt Renmin, he met the Soviet legal experts who would influence him for life, including Bestrova and Damaheng, and received systematic training in criminal law. In 1953, Gao graduated with top marks and stayed on as a teacher. That was the beginning of more than seventy years in legal education.\nThe Long Road to Legislation: From Draft 22 to Draft 38 On the eve of the founding of the PRC, the central leadership decided, for political reasons, to completely abolish the old Nationalist legal system known as the \u0026ldquo;Six Codes\u0026rdquo; and build a socialist legal system from scratch. The decision broke with the old order, but it also meant that in the early years of the new state, punishment of crime often took place in a vacuum where there was no comprehensive criminal code to rely on. Courts handled cases largely through policy or through scattered special regulations such as rules on counterrevolutionary crimes and corruption.\nIn September 1954, the PRC\u0026rsquo;s first Constitution was promulgated, and the creation of a unified Criminal Law finally went onto the agenda. In October, the General Office of the Standing Committee of the National People\u0026rsquo;s Congress formed a criminal law drafting group under the direct leadership of the Party Secretariat. Gao, who had been teaching for only a year, was selected for the team because of his academic strength. He was only twenty-six, the youngest member of the group.\nHe could not have known that the work would take twenty-five years.\nThe drafting process was a long and exhausting journey. The team worked day and night, collected cases widely, and studied domestic and foreign legislation. By June 1957, it had produced Draft 22. In October 1963, it completed Draft 33. That draft had even been reviewed and approved by the Politburo Standing Committee, and final enactment seemed close.\nThen came the Cultural Revolution, and China\u0026rsquo;s legal construction fell into more than a decade of stagnation. Drafting was halted. Renmin University itself stopped operating for a time. Gao was sent down for labor and was later assigned to Beijing Medical College, where he remained for eight years. Through those long, bitter years, he preserved the materials and documents from the criminal law drafting process, waiting for the return of legal order.\nAt last, in October 1978, as the Third Plenum of the Eleventh Central Committee approached, the state put forward the principle that laws must be available, obeyed, strictly enforced, and violations punished. Criminal law legislation entered its third launch. The drafting group quickly restarted work based on Draft 33. After repeated revisions and intense debate, the historic Draft 38 took shape.\nOn July 1, 1979, the Second Session of the Fifth National People\u0026rsquo;s Congress adopted the Criminal Law of the People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of China. Gao was overwhelmed with emotion. He later recalled that this ended the PRC\u0026rsquo;s thirty-year history without a criminal code, and that criminal judgments without cited legal provisions had finally become a thing of the past.\nFrom a twenty-six-year-old young scholar to a middle-aged man with gray at his temples, Gao poured the best years of his life into those thirty-eight drafts.\nTo preserve that precious historical memory, Gao published The Gestation and Birth of the Criminal Law in 1981. The book recorded in detail the disputes and revisions from Draft 22 to Draft 38. It was also China\u0026rsquo;s first legal academic monograph after reform and opening up, and it sold out in less than a month.\nThe Establishment of the Four-Element Theory Once China had a criminal code, the next question was practical and fundamental: what logic should courts use to decide whether a person has committed a crime? This brings us to the most central and contested theory in criminal law: the theory of the constitution of crime.\nAs mentioned above, the early PRC abolished the old legal order and built legal education along a path of learning from the Soviet Union. In the early 1950s, Soviet experts such as Bestrova came to Chinese law schools. What they brought with them was the four-element theory, then dominant in Soviet criminal law.\nTo help people quickly grasp the logic of conviction during that formative period, the criminal law teaching and research section at Renmin University\u0026rsquo;s law department collectively wrote Lectures on the General Part of Criminal Law in 1957. The book introduced the four-element theory and marked its landing in China.\nBy 1982, in order to meet the needs of the restored college entrance examination and the rebuilding of legal institutions, the Ministry of Justice organized leading scholars to write a unified national textbook. Gao Mingxuan and Professor Ma Kechang of Wuhan University, then known together as \u0026ldquo;Gao in the North and Ma in the South,\u0026rdquo; co-edited the first national textbook on criminal law. With a total circulation of nearly two million copies, it firmly established the four-element theory as the basic framework of Chinese criminal law.\nSo what is the four-element theory? It holds that for conduct to constitute a crime, four puzzle pieces must all be present at the same time:\nFirst, the object of the crime: what social relation the act infringes. A homicide violates another person\u0026rsquo;s right to life; theft violates property rights.\nSecond, the objective aspect of the crime: the external manifestation of the criminal activity. What did the actor do? What result occurred? Was there causation between act and result?\nThird, the subject of the crime: whether the person who committed the act has reached the legal age of criminal responsibility and has normal mental capacity.\nFourth, the subjective aspect of the crime: the actor\u0026rsquo;s mental state. Was the act intentional or negligent?\nUnder this theory, the four elements stand or fall together. In deciding a case, the judge effectively draws a cross in the mind and fills in each element. Only when all four are complete and fit together tightly can a crime be established.\nThis way of thinking, emphasizing the unity of subjective and objective elements, is intuitive, clear, and easy to learn. At a time when many judicial workers had limited legal training, the four-element theory worked like a sharp and efficient knife. It helped Chinese courts sort out facts and punish crime, and it made a real historical contribution.\nFrom Four Elements to Three Steps: A Century-Level Debate After reform and opening up began in 1978, China\u0026rsquo;s social structure, economic model, and intellectual life all changed dramatically. The planned economy gradually gave way to a market economy. Social conflicts and forms of crime became more complex, including new kinds of economic and financial crime.\nIn that context, the 1979 Criminal Law, with only 130 crimes, began to look inadequate. Between 1981 and 1996, the Standing Committee of the National People\u0026rsquo;s Congress issued more than twenty separate criminal laws and accessory criminal provisions to patch the gaps. In 1997, the state decided to comprehensively revise the Criminal Law. Gao participated throughout that revision as a legislative expert.\nThe 1997 Criminal Law greatly expanded the list of crimes and adjusted the structure of punishment. More importantly, it expressly established three basic principles: legality, equality before criminal law, and proportionality between crime, responsibility, and punishment. Gao spent his life defending the principle of legality: no crime by analogy, and no crime without an express legal provision. The final establishment of that principle marked the true modernization of Chinese criminal law and gave Chinese criminal law a stronger basis for engagement with the world.\nImproved legislation created fertile ground for theory. In the 1990s, as Chinese legal education opened up, many younger scholars, including Chen Xingliang, Zhou Guangquan, and Zhang Mingkai, studied in Germany, Japan, and other major civil law jurisdictions. They translated and introduced a large body of German and Japanese criminal law literature.\nThese scholars brought back a very different logic of conviction: the German-derived three-step theory. Under this theory, a judge\u0026rsquo;s reasoning should not be a flat puzzle, as in the four-element model. It should be more like a funnel with three strict filters.\nThe three steps are:\nFirst, fulfillment of the statutory elements: this is a factual judgment. The judge asks only whether the actor\u0026rsquo;s conduct and result match the description in the criminal statute. If you stab someone to death with a knife, your conduct satisfies the statutory description of intentional homicide.\nSecond, unlawfulness: this is an objective legal value judgment. Even if the conduct fits the statutory description, does the overall legal order provide a justification? If there is a justification, such as self-defense or necessity, the conduct is legally permitted and therefore not unlawful.\nThird, culpability: this asks whether the actor can be personally blamed. If the conduct fits the statute and lacks justification, the judge must still ask whether moral and legal blame can be attached to the actor. A person with severe mental illness who lacks capacity, or a person acting under coercion, may not be culpable and therefore may not be criminally liable.\nThe introduction of the three-step theory landed in Chinese criminal law like a depth charge. Scholars such as Chen Xingliang argued openly for a transformation of criminal law knowledge: a move away from the Soviet model and toward the German-Japanese layered system. They criticized the four-element model for failing to distinguish clearly between \u0026ldquo;unlawfulness\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;responsibility.\u0026rdquo; In their view, without a progressive filtering structure, judges facing difficult cases are left to make life-and-death decisions through an inexpressible kind of intuition.\nTraditional scholars struck back. They argued that the four-element theory had been refined through decades of Chinese judicial practice and had developed deep institutional fit. Starting over would confuse grassroots judicial workers. They also argued that it is absurd to blame the four-element theory alone for weak human rights protection. Human rights depend on fair criminal procedure and concrete institutional implementation, not merely on conceptual games.\nThe debate reached a peak in the 2009 National Judicial Examination. Some of that year\u0026rsquo;s criminal law questions clearly leaned toward three-step reasoning in classifying cases. The legal academy was shaken. Some scholars even joked that it was a \u0026ldquo;war of the gods\u0026rdquo; in Chinese criminal law.\nFour Elements vs. Three Steps: A Deeper Look at the Logic At this point, a reader may ask: are the four-element and three-step theories not both just ways of breaking down the conditions of crime? One has four baskets, the other has three filters. What is the real difference? Why are so many leading younger scholars so convinced that the three-step model is logically tighter?\nTo answer that technical question, we need to look at the logic more closely.\nIn simple cases, any theory looks smooth. To test whether a theory is rigorous, we need to pressure it with hard borderline cases. That is exactly how Chen Xingliang and others exposed what they saw as the logical weaknesses of the four-element model.\nScenario One: The Problem of Self-Defense Suppose you are walking down the street and an attacker tries to kill you with a knife. To save yourself, you seize the knife and kill him. In law, this is self-defense and does not constitute a crime.\nUnder the four-element theory, the case feels awkward. If the judge says you are not guilty, which element is missing? Objectively, someone died. You are a normal adult. Subjectively, you intended to kill him in order to survive. So what is absent? Traditional textbooks can only explain this by saying that social harmfulness is excluded, then build a separate house next to the four-element structure called \u0026ldquo;grounds excluding crime\u0026rdquo; and place self-defense there. Logically, the structure is broken.\nUnder the three-step theory, the reasoning is much smoother. Your act satisfies the statutory elements of homicide. Factually, the killing occurred. But at the second step, unlawfulness, the law asks whether there is a justification. Because you were defending yourself against an unlawful attack, the legal order encourages and permits your act. Unlawfulness is blocked. Because there is no unlawfulness, there is no crime. The loop closes cleanly.\nScenario Two: Instigation and Juvenile Offenders Another classic example shows the precision of the three-step model. Suppose an adult, Zhang San, instigates a thirteen-year-old, Li Si, to commit burglary.\nUnder the four-element theory, a person must satisfy the object, objective aspect, subject, and subjective aspect of a crime all at once. But Li Si is thirteen and has not reached the legal age of criminal responsibility, so he lacks the proper criminal subject element. He therefore does not constitute a crime.\nHere comes the problem: if Li Si has not committed a crime, to whom is Zhang San\u0026rsquo;s status as instigator attached? To convict Zhang San, traditional theory often has to bypass joint crime and introduce the concept of an indirect principal offender, treating Li Si as Zhang San\u0026rsquo;s tool without independent agency. That patch feels cramped. The deeper reason is that in the four-element theory, all elements are mixed together to explain social harmfulness. Unlawfulness and responsibility are not separated, which creates a classification problem.\nThe three-step theory solves this neatly because it clearly separates unlawfulness from culpability.\nLi Si committed burglary in the factual sense and satisfied the first step: the statutory elements. He had no lawful justification such as self-defense, so the second step, unlawfulness, is also satisfied. In legal evaluation, what Li Si did was unlawful and wrong.\nFor accomplice liability, the three-step theory holds that it is enough for the instigated person to commit an unlawful act. The instigated person does not have to be punishable in the end. Since Li Si\u0026rsquo;s conduct has crossed the first two steps and is unlawful, Zhang San, as the instigator, can naturally be held liable.\nOnly at the third step does the judge examine Li Si\u0026rsquo;s personal responsibility. Because Li Si is only thirteen and lacks mature capacity, the law does not blame him subjectively. Li Si is not punished, but Zhang San, as an adult with full responsibility, must bear criminal liability for instigation.\nThis is the point. The three-step theory separates \u0026ldquo;the act is wrong\u0026rdquo; from \u0026ldquo;this person can be blamed.\u0026rdquo; The act is wrong, so the instigator is punished. The child who performed the act may be excused, so the child is not punished. That layered movement from objective unlawfulness to subjective culpability is why many criminal law scholars argue for the three-step model.\nA Historical Monument That Cannot Be Erased Still, when discussing theoretical change, we must not fall into historical nihilism. Whatever criticism the four-element theory faces today, the historical monument built by Gao Mingxuan and the first generation of Chinese criminal law scholars cannot be erased by anyone or any era.\nIn the early PRC, when legal resources were desperately scarce and legal nihilism was widespread, Gao\u0026rsquo;s generation built the first shelter for China\u0026rsquo;s criminal justice system. The four-element theory has logical flaws, but over decades it guided millions of cases through its simplicity and usability. It contributed greatly to maintaining social order and building legal authority.\nGao\u0026rsquo;s lifetime of work also won him the highest recognition at home and abroad. In April 2015, for his outstanding contribution to criminal law, he received the Cesare Beccaria Award from the International Society of Social Defence, an honor often called the Nobel Prize of criminal law. Gao became the first Asian scholar to receive it. In 2019, on the eve of the seventieth anniversary of the PRC, the state awarded him the national honorary title of People\u0026rsquo;s Educator, making him the only representative from the legal academy to hold that honor so far.\nAcademic progress is possible because the shoulders of earlier generations are broad enough. What is most admirable about Gao is not only his body of work, but also his openness as a scholar and his humane spirit as an educator.\nSince becoming China\u0026rsquo;s first doctoral supervisor in criminal law in 1984, he trained more than sixty doctoral students. Many leading scholars who later criticized the four-element theory and called for a transformation of legal knowledge, including Chen Xingliang, were Gao\u0026rsquo;s own students.\nFacing fundamental challenges from younger scholars, Gao never used authority to suppress them. He once advised young teachers: when teaching undergraduates, focus on the basics and avoid controversial issues at first; when teaching graduate students, explain both sides of the debate fully; when teaching doctoral students, discuss the most advanced questions and encourage them to think for themselves. He lived by the idea that students need not be inferior to the teacher. That tolerance for dissent and encouragement of innovation is one of the forces that has allowed Chinese legal scholarship to keep renewing itself.\nLooking Ahead From the historical moment of Gao Mingxuan\u0026rsquo;s death, the future direction of Chinese criminal law is already quite clear.\nFirst, the theoretical system will move from closure toward broad compatibility. On reform of the theory of crime, scholars have proposed several paths: reordering the four elements, adding or subtracting elements from the existing model, or starting over with a full three-step structure. The future Chinese theory is unlikely to be a pure copy of the German-Japanese model, and it will not simply return to the old Soviet path. More likely, it will draw deeply on Chinese judicial practice, integrate the existing elements under the statutory-element analysis, and build a new layered model that combines logical rigor with Chinese institutional reality: fulfillment of elements, unlawfulness, and criminal punishability.\nGao himself advised younger scholars to value international cooperation and exchange in criminal law: learn from others\u0026rsquo; strengths, but also have the courage to explain China\u0026rsquo;s own experience.\nSecond, the philosophy of punishment will complete its shift from social defense alone toward human rights protection. As legal civilization advances, criminal law should not only be the sword that punishes crime. It should also be a constitutional charter that limits state power and protects citizens. By introducing the strict logical filters of layered theory, future judgments can better prevent abuse of punishment and ensure that every decision affecting liberty and life can withstand serious logical and ethical scrutiny.\nFinally, legislation and amendment will become more refined in the face of new challenges. As Gao pointed out in his later years, China\u0026rsquo;s criminal law should continue to be revised through criminal law amendments, steadily improving the coherence of the system and the technique of legislation. Whether dealing with complex cybercrime or legal gaps created by artificial intelligence, theory must provide more precise tools.\nGao Mingxuan has left us, taking with him an age of passion, hardship, and pioneering labor. But the first stone of the rule of law that he helped lay, and the scientific spirit with which he encouraged reform and pursued truth, will continue to guide later generations of Chinese legal professionals.\nThe best way to remember Gao is not to seal his doctrines in a shrine. It is to inherit his courage, keep pushing the transformation and improvement of Chinese rule of law, and build China\u0026rsquo;s legal structure more firmly with both rigorous logic and deep human concern.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260310/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn February 26, 2026, the renowned jurist \u003cstrong\u003eGao Mingxuan\u003c/strong\u003e, often called a grand master of Chinese criminal law, died of illness at the age of ninety-eight.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs one of the first generation of legal scholars trained after the founding of the People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of China, Gao\u0026rsquo;s life was almost a living history of Chinese criminal law. He was the \u003cstrong\u003eonly scholar who participated throughout the drafting of the PRC\u0026rsquo;s first Criminal Law\u003c/strong\u003e. He was \u003cstrong\u003eChina\u0026rsquo;s first doctoral supervisor in criminal law\u003c/strong\u003e. He wrote \u003cstrong\u003ethe first legal monograph published after reform and opening up\u003c/strong\u003e, and co-edited \u003cstrong\u003ethe first nationally unified criminal law textbook\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Gao Mingxuan's Death and the Great Debate in Modern Chinese Criminal Law"},{"content":"On January 30, 2026, after months of speculation and both public and backroom political fighting, Donald Trump dropped a bombshell on Truth Social: he formally nominated Kevin Warsh as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.\nThe language was unmistakably Trumpian. He called Warsh a \u0026ldquo;central casting\u0026rdquo; choice and predicted that the former Fed governor would become a \u0026ldquo;great, maybe even the greatest\u0026rdquo; Fed chair in history.\nThe nomination marks the end of the Jerome Powell era. It also suggests that the century-old Federal Reserve is about to enter a period of sharp regime change. But this is not a calm handoff surrounded by flowers and applause. At the very moment the nomination was announced, the Fed\u0026rsquo;s headquarters on Constitution Avenue was sitting at the center of an unprecedented legal storm. The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s criminal investigation into Powell was still underway, and allegations of cost overruns in the building renovation hung over Fed officials like a blade.\nKevin Warsh, once a Wall Street golden boy, the youngest governor in Federal Reserve history, and the son-in-law of the Estee Lauder family, now returns from Stanford\u0026rsquo;s academic world to the arena of power. Trump expects from him two things at once: lower interest rates and deregulation.\nThe world is left asking: how will a former inflation hawk steer the flagship of the global financial system in an age of populism, geopolitical shocks, and heavy debt? Is his rise the beginning of the Fed\u0026rsquo;s return to tradition, or the prelude to the final loss of its independence?\nThe Power Game Behind the Fed Chair To understand how brutal this fight has become, we first need to look at the real weight of the Fed chair. In the modern global economy, the chair of the Federal Reserve is often considered the second most powerful person after the president of the United States. In some dimensions, the chair\u0026rsquo;s influence over markets is even greater.\nThe Fed is not merely America\u0026rsquo;s central bank. It is the heart of the dollar system. The federal funds rate it sets is the anchor for global asset pricing. The size of its balance sheet determines how loose or tight dollar liquidity is around the world. From Tokyo\u0026rsquo;s stock market to London\u0026rsquo;s bond desks, from Brazilian exporters to Shanghai property developers, every tremor in the global economy is connected to decisions made inside the Eccles Building in Washington.\nThe Fed does not only shape the U.S. economy. Through the dollar system, it moves global equities, bonds, currencies, and credit.\nThe power structure of the office is complicated by design. The Fed chair is nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate for a four-year term. But that is only half the story. The chair must also be one of the seven governors of the Federal Reserve Board, and governors serve fourteen-year terms. This dual-track design was meant to protect the Fed\u0026rsquo;s independence and prevent a president from controlling monetary policy by rapidly replacing governors. In the political reality of 2026, however, this design has become a trigger for constitutional conflict.\nPowell and Trump: from \u0026ldquo;my pick\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;enemy of the country\u0026rdquo;\nThe feud between Jerome Powell and Donald Trump reads like a modern political thriller. It did not begin today. It had years of painful buildup.\nIn 2017, Trump broke with decades of custom by declining to reappoint Janet Yellen. Instead, he chose Powell, a Republican lawyer rather than an economics PhD, hoping he would keep rates low and help power the economy during Trump\u0026rsquo;s term. But Powell\u0026rsquo;s technocratic instincts soon infuriated him. Faced with the risk of overheating, Powell insisted on gradual rate hikes. To Trump, that looked like betrayal.\nDuring Trump\u0026rsquo;s first term, he shattered the old taboo against presidents publicly commenting on monetary policy. He attacked Powell on Twitter, calling him stubborn and accusing him of lacking \u0026ldquo;guts,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;sense,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;vision.\u0026rdquo; The attacks reached a peak during the 2024 campaign, when Trump asked on social media: \u0026ldquo;Who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?\u0026rdquo;\nPresident Biden\u0026rsquo;s 2022 renomination of Powell temporarily gave the Fed a layer of political protection. But after Trump won the 2024 election and returned to the White House, a showdown became inevitable. By 2025, with inflation recurring and Trump eager for stimulus, the White House had run out of patience. Trump declared that the Fed chair should be someone who could \u0026ldquo;talk\u0026rdquo; to the president, not a bureaucrat hiding behind data.\nRenovation-gate: a staged palace coup\nEarlier attacks were mostly verbal. The \u0026ldquo;renovation-gate\u0026rdquo; crisis of late 2025 and early 2026 moved the fight into a much harsher legal phase.\nThe issue was not monetary policy. It was the renovation of the Fed\u0026rsquo;s headquarters.\nThe Eccles Building and the nearby Martin Building had aged visibly since their construction in the 1930s. The Fed launched a major renovation project to remove asbestos, update outdated mechanical systems, and improve security. Under ordinary circumstances, this would have been an administrative matter. The Trump administration saw something else: a weapon to use against Powell.\nTrump personally visited the site and confronted Powell in front of cameras. The awkward scene was recorded: Trump pointed at the construction site and challenged Powell on cost overruns, while Powell shook his head and tried to explain that the numbers in the president\u0026rsquo;s hand confused the completed Martin Building with the still-underway Eccles project.\nThe situation escalated quickly. The Justice Department opened a criminal investigation into Powell, accusing him of concealing the true state of the renovation project in congressional testimony. Washington\u0026rsquo;s legal and financial communities were stunned. Powell responded with a sharply worded video statement, calling the investigation \u0026ldquo;unprecedented\u0026rdquo; and saying that the threat of criminal charges was the consequence of the Fed setting rates based on its best judgment rather than presidential preference.\nIt was against this near-constitutional crisis that the search for a successor accelerated. Trump needed someone who could replace Powell, reassure markets, carry out his will, and still survive Senate scrutiny.\nWhy Kevin Warsh?\nThe shortlist included Kevin Warsh, National Economic Council director Kevin Hassett, Fed governor Christopher Waller, and BlackRock executive Rick Rieder. The press jokingly called it \u0026ldquo;the battle of the two Kevins.\u0026rdquo;\nWarsh won in the end. That was no accident. He offered Trump the best balance across several demands.\nFirst, Warsh is handsome, wealthy, polished, and exactly the kind of \u0026ldquo;central casting\u0026rdquo; figure Trump likes in senior office. More importantly, he is married into the Estee Lauder family. His father-in-law, Ronald Lauder, has been Trump\u0026rsquo;s friend and donor for decades. In Trump\u0026rsquo;s world, that kind of personal connection often matters more than a doctorate.\nSecond, compared with Hassett, Warsh has deeper roots on Wall Street. He was a Morgan Stanley partner and played a meaningful role during the 2008 financial crisis. Markets tend to see him as a \u0026ldquo;safe\u0026rdquo; choice: politically compliant, perhaps, but not someone likely to crash the dollar.\nThird, Warsh used to be a famous inflation hawk, which seems to clash with Trump\u0026rsquo;s demand for low rates. In recent years, however, he has successfully recast his economic philosophy around a new argument: use supply-side reform and deregulation to suppress inflation, thereby creating room for rate cuts. That logic fits Trump\u0026rsquo;s political wish perfectly: low rates and high growth at the same time.\nKevin Warsh: From Wall Street to the Center of Power The elite path: Stanford, Harvard, and Morgan Stanley\nWarsh\u0026rsquo;s biography is almost a textbook version of the American elite track. Born on April 13, 1970, into a wealthy family in upstate New York, he studied public policy at Stanford, focusing on economics and statistics, and then earned a law degree from Harvard. That West Coast plus Ivy League background gave him the ability to move across academia, law, and business.\nIn 1995, at just twenty-five, Warsh joined Morgan Stanley\u0026rsquo;s mergers and acquisitions division. In that top-tier Wall Street arena, he quickly showed a sharp business instinct. Over seven years as an investment banker, he worked on major deals across manufacturing, technology, and financial services.\nThat experience did more than make him rich. It taught him how markets work at a granular level: how banks operate, how credit flows, and what happens when liquidity dries up. That set him apart from many central bankers who had spent their entire lives on university campuses.\nWarsh has moved through investment banking, the White House, the Fed, and academia. That is one reason he is seen as a market-friendly nominee.\nThe White House and the youngest Fed governor\nIn 2002, Warsh passed through the revolving door into the George W. Bush administration as a special assistant at the National Economic Council. There, he became one of Bush\u0026rsquo;s key advisers on capital markets and learned how to operate where politics and economics meet.\nIn 2006, Bush nominated him to the Federal Reserve Board. At thirty-five, Warsh became the youngest governor in the Fed\u0026rsquo;s history.\nMany observers wondered whether this young lawyer could handle such a technical institution. The Board was usually the home of older economics professors. History soon gave Warsh a chance to prove himself, and in the harshest possible way.\nTrial by fire: the 2008 financial crisis\nJust two years after Warsh joined the Fed, the subprime crisis erupted and the global financial system came close to collapse. In that moment, Fed chair Ben Bernanke discovered that the young former banker beside him had something many academic officials lacked: a direct sense of Wall Street fear and a deep network of contacts.\nWarsh became a key link between Bernanke and Wall Street CEOs. In March 2008, he was directly involved in the emergency negotiations for JPMorgan\u0026rsquo;s acquisition of Bear Stearns, trying to stop systemic risk from spreading before the weekend ended.\nIn September 2008, during the fateful weekend that decided Lehman Brothers\u0026rsquo; future, Warsh sat in the New York Fed\u0026rsquo;s war room as the Fed\u0026rsquo;s eyes and ears. He lived through the late-night meetings that would shape the fate of countless people. He had to explain to Bernanke why a complex derivative could bring down a bank, while also communicating the Fed\u0026rsquo;s intentions to panicked markets.\nWarsh showed unusual calm for his age. He supported the Fed\u0026rsquo;s first round of quantitative easing, seeing it as an emergency measure when markets had stopped functioning: break the glass and pull out the fire extinguisher.\nBreaking with quantitative easing\nOnce the emergency phase passed, however, Warsh\u0026rsquo;s honeymoon with Bernanke ended. When the Fed launched QE2 in 2010, his position changed sharply.\nHe published an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal and raised objections inside the Fed. He worried that prolonged unconventional monetary policy would bring serious side effects:\nMisallocation of capital: cheap money would flow into speculation rather than productive investment. Loss of fiscal discipline: central bank purchases of government debt would encourage unchecked borrowing. Inflation risk: he warned that the main risk still lay with inflation and doubted the Fed\u0026rsquo;s confidence in its ability to manage expectations. In 2011, Warsh resigned from the Fed Board before the end of his term. The move seemed aloof at the time, but it later helped him build a reputation among conservative economists as a principled hawk. That reputation became an important piece of political capital in his nomination.\nA marriage into power\nAny account of Warsh\u0026rsquo;s rise has to mention his marriage. In 2002, he married Jane Lauder, heiress to the Estee Lauder cosmetics empire and now global brand president of Clinique. Her personal fortune is measured in billions.\nThe marriage brought Warsh into a powerful social and political network. Jane\u0026rsquo;s father, Ronald Lauder, is not only president of the World Jewish Congress but also a longtime friend and major donor to Donald Trump. Some reports have even said that Trump\u0026rsquo;s strange idea of buying Greenland was originally inspired by Ronald Lauder.\nIn Trump\u0026rsquo;s view of appointments, personal trust often outranks professional credentials. As biographer Tim O\u0026rsquo;Brien has put it, connections to powerful or famous people matter deeply to Trump. Ronald Lauder\u0026rsquo;s quiet advocacy surely helped Warsh in this contest. To Trump, Warsh is not merely a technocrat. He belongs, in some sense, to the circle.\nWarsh\u0026rsquo;s Economics: A Blend of Old and New Warsh is not a traditional Keynesian, nor is he a pure monetarist. His thinking mixes Wall Street pragmatism, old-style fiscal conservatism, and real enthusiasm for new technology. From his recent comments, we can sketch the outline of what might be called Warshism.\nPoint one: the Fed needs regime change\nWarsh\u0026rsquo;s most radical view is his criticism of the Fed itself. He believes the institution has suffered from \u0026ldquo;institutional drift\u0026rdquo;: it has repeatedly misjudged inflation and expanded into areas such as climate change and social equity that he thinks lie outside its proper role.\nHis phrase \u0026ldquo;regime change\u0026rdquo; refers not only to personnel but also to a reset of the policy framework. He has criticized Powell\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;data dependence\u0026rdquo; as driving by looking in the rearview mirror. In his view, the Fed should be more forward-looking, using theory and market signals to anticipate the economy rather than waiting for lagging employment data. He also thinks the Fed should focus more narrowly on price stability, pay less attention to short-term employment swings, and avoid deliberately creating unemployment just to bring down inflation.\nPoint two: inflation is a choice, and AI is the cure\nUnlike mainstream economists who place much of the blame for inflation on supply chains or geopolitics, Warsh insists that \u0026ldquo;inflation is a policy choice.\u0026rdquo; Its roots, in his view, are excessive money creation by the Fed and excessive spending by the government.\nTo reconcile that view with Trump\u0026rsquo;s demand for rate cuts, Warsh introduces a new variable: artificial intelligence. He is extremely bullish on the productivity revolution AI may bring, seeing it as a powerful disinflationary force.\nHis logic is simple. AI will sharply raise productivity and reduce the cost of goods and services. Even if monetary policy is relatively loose, a supply-side boom could keep inflation down. This gives him a theoretical basis for supporting lower rates without triggering immediate inflation panic.\nIn Warsh\u0026rsquo;s story, AI is a key variable: productivity growth is expected to offset inflationary pressure.\nPoint three: ally of crypto, enemy of CBDCs\nWarsh\u0026rsquo;s view of digital assets is sharply divided, which has made him popular in parts of the crypto community.\nHe has said clearly that Bitcoin does not make him uncomfortable. He sees it as an important asset that can provide signals to policymakers and even serve as a useful check on the dollar system. At the same time, he strongly opposes a retail central bank digital currency, calling it a financial panopticon that would allow excessive government surveillance and crowd out private innovation. He prefers regulated private stablecoins as the path for digitizing the dollar, rather than direct government issuance.\nPoint four: shadow banking and deregulation\nDespite his Wall Street background, Warsh has been critical of too-big-to-fail banking. He has argued for stronger market discipline so banks bear the cost of their own risks rather than relying on government bailouts.\nIn the current political environment, however, he appears more inclined to loosen constraints on traditional banks, such as the capital requirements under the Basel III endgame, while watching the disorderly growth of shadow banking and private credit. His deeper argument is that excessive bank regulation may simply push risk into less transparent parts of the financial system. That is the logic behind his deregulatory instinct.\nThe World Economy in the Warsh Era With Warsh\u0026rsquo;s nomination now settled, global attention turns to what comes next. If he is confirmed by the Senate and takes over the Fed in May, or perhaps earlier, what will the world economy face?\nA new monetary mix: tighter assets, looser rates\nWarsh may try a bold policy combination: quantitative tightening plus rate cuts.\nHe has long criticized the Fed\u0026rsquo;s seven-trillion-dollar balance sheet as a source of market distortion. He may accelerate balance sheet reduction and drain excess liquidity. In exchange, the inflation room created by shrinking the balance sheet could be used to satisfy Trump\u0026rsquo;s demand for rate cuts.\nThis strategy attempts to balance hawks, through balance sheet tightening, and doves, through lower rates. But the operation is extremely difficult. If the balance sheet shrinks too fast, the repo market could freeze, as it did in September 2019. If rates fall too quickly, inflation could reignite.\nQT plus rate cuts appears to satisfy both sides, but in practice it requires precise control over liquidity and inflation expectations.\nThe Warsh paradox for the dollar\nTrump has long complained that a strong dollar hurts exports. Yet Warsh\u0026rsquo;s appointment may push the dollar higher in the short run.\nMarkets believe that even if Warsh is politically obedient, he still carries a hawkish instinct. If the U.S. economy outperforms Europe and China under the combined stimulus of AI and deregulation, capital may continue flowing back into America. A strong dollar would keep squeezing emerging markets and increase their debt-servicing pressure.\nBut if Trump intervenes directly in the exchange rate, Warsh may have to coordinate with the Treasury through verbal intervention or even joint action. That would be a major test of his independence.\nPowell as shadow chair\nOne huge uncertainty remains: will Jerome Powell leave? His term as chair ends in May 2026, but his term as a governor runs until January 2028. If anger over the Justice Department investigation leads Powell to remain on the Board, the Fed could enter an unprecedented period of dual power.\nThere is a historical echo. In 1948, Marriner Eccles stayed on the Board after President Truman removed him as chair, and later helped push through the famous Fed-Treasury Accord, which established the Fed\u0026rsquo;s independence. Powell, if he remains, could become a de facto opposition leader inside the FOMC, using his influence and vote to check Warsh\u0026rsquo;s more radical policies. That would make Fed decision-making more gridlocked and markets more uncertain.\nA chain reaction among global central banks\nEuropean central bankers have already voiced support for Powell and stressed the importance of central bank independence. Facing a more politicized Fed, Christine Lagarde and Andrew Bailey may be forced to run more independent monetary policies to protect their economies from U.S. spillovers, including imported inflation.\nAt the same time, Warsh\u0026rsquo;s sympathy for trade protectionism may accelerate financial decoupling between China and the United States. If the Fed cooperates with trade-war goals and exchange-rate policy, China may speed up renminbi internationalization and asset diversification to reduce reliance on the dollar system.\nDancing on a Wire Kevin Warsh\u0026rsquo;s nomination is more than a personnel change. It marks the fading of the central bank era we learned about in textbooks, one built around technical neutrality and political independence. Warsh represents a new spirit of the age: deep entanglement between markets and politics, and a strange fusion of elite networks with populist demands.\nHe will be dancing on a wire. On one side is the president in the Oval Office demanding lower rates, faster. On the other is the trillion-dollar bond market, always ready to punish policy mistakes. Beneath him is a world economy being reshaped by the AI revolution, debt pressure, and geopolitical fragmentation.\nIf he succeeds, he may become, as Trump says, a great chair who restores American economic dynamism and proves that supply-side reform can defeat inflation. If he fails, the Fed\u0026rsquo;s century of credibility could be damaged in his hands, and the world economy may have to face a chaotic age without a monetary anchor.\nFor Kevin Warsh, the real test has only just begun.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260130/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn January 30, 2026, after months of speculation and both public and backroom political fighting, Donald Trump dropped a bombshell on Truth Social: he formally nominated \u003cstrong\u003eKevin Warsh\u003c/strong\u003e as the next chair of the Federal Reserve.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe language was unmistakably Trumpian. He called Warsh a \u0026ldquo;central casting\u0026rdquo; choice and predicted that the former Fed governor would become a \u0026ldquo;great, maybe even the greatest\u0026rdquo; Fed chair in history.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe nomination marks the end of the Jerome Powell era. It also suggests that the century-old Federal Reserve is about to enter a period of sharp regime change. But this is not a calm handoff surrounded by flowers and applause. At the very moment the nomination was announced, the Fed\u0026rsquo;s headquarters on Constitution Avenue was sitting at the center of an unprecedented legal storm. The Justice Department\u0026rsquo;s criminal investigation into Powell was still underway, and allegations of cost overruns in the building renovation hung over Fed officials like a blade.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Who Is Kevin Warsh, and How Might He Shape the World Economy?"},{"content":"Have you heard of ClawdBot? It is a very popular open-source personal AI assistant. Unlike traditional chatbots that simply wait for instructions, ClawdBot has a degree of initiative: it can message you proactively, manage tasks, and run on your own local device.\nMany tutorials recommend running it on a Mac Mini or a Linux server, but running it on Windows is perfectly fine too.\nIn this post, I will walk you through installing ClawdBot on Windows, configuring it to use Google\u0026rsquo;s Gemini API (currently one of the best AI model options, with a free quota), and connecting it to Telegram, so you can chat with your AI assistant anywhere.\n🛠️ Preparation Before starting, make sure you have the following:\nA computer running Windows 11. A Google Gemini API key: you can get one for free from Google AI Studio . A Telegram account: you will use it to create your bot. Step 1: Install WSL2 (Windows Subsystem for Linux) Key point: ClawdBot cannot run natively in Windows PowerShell or CMD. It needs a Linux environment. Fortunately, Windows already provides a very good tool for this: WSL2.\nOpen the Windows Start menu, find PowerShell, right-click it, and choose Run as administrator.\nEnter the following command and press Enter:\nwsl --install Restart your computer.\nAfter rebooting, open the Microsoft Store, search for \u0026ldquo;Ubuntu,\u0026rdquo; and download and install Ubuntu 24.04.1 LTS.\nOpen Ubuntu. It will ask you to create a username and password. Tip: when entering the password, nothing will appear on the screen. This is normal. Type it and press Enter.\nOnce you are inside the Ubuntu terminal window, we can continue.\nStep 2: Install Node.js the Right Way ClawdBot needs a relatively recent version of Node.js (v22+). The version bundled with Ubuntu is usually too old, so we will use NVM (Node Version Manager) to install the latest version.\nRun the following commands in the Ubuntu terminal you just opened:\nDownload and install NVM:\nwget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash Reload environment variables so the system recognizes NVM:\nsource ~/.bashrc Install the latest Node.js:\nnvm install --lts Verify the installation:\nnode -v npm -v If both commands print version numbers, the installation succeeded.\nStep 3: Install and Configure ClawdBot Now comes the easiest part. ClawdBot provides a one-line installation script. Run this in your Ubuntu terminal:\ncurl -fsSL https://clawd.bot/install.sh | bash The script will automatically download the required files and install ClawdBot globally inside your virtual Linux system.\nAfter installation, if you see the following screen, it means ClawdBot has been installed successfully:\nAfter installation, we need to do a quick setup.\nStart the setup wizard with:\nclawdbot onboard Follow the prompts:\nUnderstand this is risky: choose Yes. Onboarding mode: choose QuickStart. Model provider: choose as needed; here we choose Google Gemini. API key: paste the Google AI key you created earlier. Default model: choose as needed. I recommend gemini-2.0-flash (fast and low-cost) or gemini-2.0-pro (smarter). Select channel: choose as needed. I recommend Telegram. Step 4: Configure the Telegram Bot After choosing Telegram, ClawdBot will ask you for a Bot Token. Open Telegram on your phone or computer and search for @BotFather .\nSend /newbot to BotFather. It will ask you to give your bot a display name, such as \u0026ldquo;My Jarvis,\u0026rdquo; and a username, such as my_private_clawd_bot. BotFather will then give you an API token that looks like 123456:ABC-DEF.... Paste this token back into the Ubuntu terminal window.\nContinue configuring ClawdBot. Skills and Hooks can be skipped for now. For the monitoring method (how to hatch your bot), choose according to your needs. I recommend monitoring it directly in the command-line TUI.\nOnce the above steps are complete, your ClawdBot is officially running.\nStep 5: Pair Your Device For security reasons, your bot will not respond to strangers by default. You need to pair it with your Telegram account.\nMake sure ClawdBot is running in the terminal. Open the bot you just created in Telegram and tap Start (or send /start). The bot will reply with a pairing code. Go back to your Ubuntu terminal. You should see a prompt asking for approval. Follow the on-screen instructions and enter the approval command with the pairing code. 🎉 Done! Your bot is online and ready.\nStep 6: How to Use It Now you can chat with your bot directly in Telegram. Try prompts like:\n\u0026ldquo;Summarize this article for me:\u0026rdquo; followed by a link. \u0026ldquo;Remind me to turn off the oven in 20 minutes.\u0026rdquo; It will message you proactively when the time comes. \u0026ldquo;What\u0026rsquo;s the weather in Tokyo right now?\u0026rdquo; Keeping It Running in the Background Because this program runs on your own computer, the bot will go offline if you close the Ubuntu window or shut down the machine. To keep it running in the background while using Windows, you can:\nSimply minimize the Ubuntu terminal window instead of closing it. Or learn to use tools such as tmux or screen inside Ubuntu to keep the session alive. Common Troubleshooting Error: \u0026ldquo;Command not found\u0026rdquo;: make sure you are entering commands in the Ubuntu (WSL) terminal, not Windows PowerShell. The bot does not reply: check the logs in the terminal. If you see Gemini API errors, your key may be invalid, or you may have hit rate limits due to heavy usage. In that case, you may need to enable pay-as-you-go billing in Google Cloud. Enjoy your new AI companion. Unlike ChatGPT, it lives on your hard drive, understands your context, and can contact you proactively when it thinks you need to know something.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20260127/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eHave you heard of \u003cstrong\u003eClawdBot\u003c/strong\u003e? It is a very popular open-source personal AI assistant. Unlike traditional chatbots that simply wait for instructions, ClawdBot has a degree of \u003cstrong\u003einitiative\u003c/strong\u003e: it can message you proactively, manage tasks, and run on your own local device.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eMany tutorials recommend running it on a Mac Mini or a Linux server, but \u003cstrong\u003erunning it on Windows is perfectly fine too\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn this post, I will walk you through installing ClawdBot on \u003cstrong\u003eWindows\u003c/strong\u003e, configuring it to use Google\u0026rsquo;s \u003cstrong\u003eGemini API\u003c/strong\u003e (currently one of the best AI model options, with a free quota), and connecting it to \u003cstrong\u003eTelegram\u003c/strong\u003e, so you can chat with your AI assistant anywhere.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to Use ClawdBot on Windows: Build a Personal AI Assistant with Gemini and Telegram"},{"content":"Because of a few personal needs, I often need an overseas phone number. So I have been looking for an overseas SIM that is affordable and reasonably stable.\nBefore this, I had been using Ultra Mobile\u0026rsquo;s U.S. PayGo plan at $3 per month, and a 3HK roaming card from Hong Kong that costs HKD 268 per year and includes 45 GB of data. Both have their drawbacks. The PayGo card can make and receive calls and texts in mainland China, but it cannot roam for data. The 3HK card can roam for data in mainland China, but its IP address is in Hong Kong, so it cannot log in to ChatGPT, and it cannot make calls or receive texts.\nFor a long time, I had been looking for an overseas SIM that could roam for data in mainland China, use a non-Hong Kong IP address, receive SMS messages, and still stay cheap. Then I found RedteaGo , a global mobile data product from the Austrian carrier RedteaMobile.\nRedteaGo\u0026rsquo;s global plans have several advantages:\nDuring the validity period, up to 365 days and renewable, they can receive SMS messages for free, which is useful for registering apps. This applies to global plans only. They support data roaming in 130+ regions, including mainland China, and the IP address is in Europe, so logging in to ChatGPT is easy. This also applies to global plans only. The price is low. The 100 MB keep-alive plan costs only $3.20 per year. With referral credit, it can be as low as $2, or about 15 RMB, for one year. eSIM is supported, so no physical SIM card is needed. No real-name registration is required. You can buy RedteaGo plans from the official website or the official app. If your phone supports eSIM, you can buy directly in the app. If your phone does not support eSIM and you need to use a third-party physical eSIM card, it is better to order from the website, because only website orders provide an eSIM QR code.\nFirst, register a RedteaGo account with your email address. You can use my referral code MASO0042; both you and I will receive $3 in credit, which can be used toward future plans. With the referral credit, the cheapest keep-alive setup costs only $2 for a full year.\nAfter registration, you can choose a plan. If you want to use the $3 referral credit when buying a plan, top up your account first and then buy the plan. If your balance is lower than the plan price at checkout, you can only pay the full plan price directly and cannot apply the referral credit. This is easy to miss.\nThe minimum top-up amount is $2. Payment methods include Apple Pay, international credit cards, and Alipay. The screenshot below shows the top-up flow in the RedteaGo app. Before topping up, check the price of the plan you want. Make sure your top-up plus the $3 credit is greater than the plan price, so the balance can be used at checkout.\nTake the cheapest $3.20 plan as an example. After registering with the referral code, the account starts with a $3 gift balance. If we top up the minimum $2, the account balance becomes $5. When buying the plan with balance payment, $1.80 remains in the account and can be used for another plan later.\nAfter topping up, you can buy a plan. I recommend these three:\nGlobal, 130+ regions, 100 MB for 365 days, free SMS reception, $3.20, European IP. Global, 130+ regions, 1 GB for 365 days, free SMS reception, $19.90, European IP. Mainland China, 50 GB for 365 days, no SMS support, $26.19, Hong Kong IP. All three can roam for data in mainland China. The global plans use a European IP address; the mainland China plan uses a Hong Kong IP address. The global plans include a +43 phone number and can receive SMS messages for free. The mainland China plan does not include a phone number and cannot receive SMS.\nChoose based on your needs. For the same 365-day Hong Kong IP roaming use case, the third plan costs only about 190 RMB, far lower than the HKD 268 3HK 45 GB plan, though it lacks the phone number and SMS function. If you count the $3 referral credit, 50 GB for 365 days can be had for about 170 RMB. Not bad at all.\nActivation is simple. On an eSIM-capable iPhone, just tap the activation button and follow the steps.\nAfter activation, the carrier shown in the upper-left corner is RedteaMobile, and the plan page shows remaining data and validity.\nThe validity period starts after successful activation. No matter which plan you buy, the plan expires if any of the following happens. After expiration, you must buy a new plan to continue using it, and the previous phone number cannot be recovered.\nNo usage for 30 consecutive days after activation. The plan\u0026rsquo;s data is used up. The validity period ends. If you want to keep your phone number before the plan expires, remember to renew before any of these conditions is triggered. Once the plan expires, the old number is gone.\nOverall, RedteaGo is a low-cost overseas mobile product that can provide a native European IP address. It is suitable for users with specific needs, can replace 3HK in many scenarios, and does not require real-name registration. Finally, here is my referral code again: MASO0042. If you register with it, both of us receive $3 in credit that can be applied to plan purchases.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20250317/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eBecause of a few personal needs, I often need an overseas phone number. So I have been looking for an overseas SIM that is affordable and reasonably stable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eBefore this, I had been using Ultra Mobile\u0026rsquo;s U.S. PayGo plan at $3 per month, and a 3HK roaming card from Hong Kong that costs HKD 268 per year and includes 45 GB of data. Both have their drawbacks. The PayGo card can make and receive calls and texts in mainland China, but it cannot roam for data. The 3HK card can roam for data in mainland China, but its IP address is in Hong Kong, so it cannot log in to ChatGPT, and it cannot make calls or receive texts.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"RedteaGo: An Austrian eSIM That Costs About 15 RMB a Year to Keep Active"},{"content":"On February 28, 2025, the meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House turned into an unprecedented public conflict. This high-level meeting, which was originally intended to sign an important mining agreement, turned into a fierce quarrel due to differences between the two sides on the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. US Vice President Vance even accused Zelensky of not being grateful enough for US assistance. The diplomatic conflict, which occurred on live television, sharply deteriorated relations between the two countries. Trump eventually canceled the joint press conference and asked Zelensky to leave the White House, using social media to express that \u0026ldquo;he disrespected the sacred Oval Office of the United States.\u0026rdquo; This incident demonstrated the extreme manifestation of the Trump administration\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;America First\u0026rdquo; foreign policy and had a serious impact on the future destiny of Ukraine and the unity of the Western alliance. It also highlighted the fundamental change in Trump\u0026rsquo;s attitude towards Putin.\nBackground and preparation for the meeting The high-stakes meeting took place at a time when Ukraine\u0026rsquo;s future fate hangs in the balance, and all parties have high hopes for it. The main purpose of Zelensky\u0026rsquo;s trip is to sign an agreement with the United States on rare earth minerals, which is considered to be a condition for continued military assistance from the United States [2]. The meeting follows weeks of intense negotiations between U.S. allies trying to reconcile differences between Washington and Kyiv. French President Macron and British Prime Minister Starmer have both met with Trump and tried to persuade him to have constructive dialogue with Zelensky [2]. These diplomatic efforts have adopted a flattering tactic, with Macron recalling Trump\u0026rsquo;s visit to Notre Dame and Starmer hand-delivering a letter from King Charles.[2]\nA key background for this meeting is that the Trump administration has previously held peace negotiations with Russia, but excluded Ukraine and Europe [3]. This unilateral action triggered strong dissatisfaction in Kyiv and further aggravated tensions between the two parties. Before Zelensky arrived at the White House, his team was forced to formally agree to Trump\u0026rsquo;s plan on Wednesday, which finally led to Friday\u0026rsquo;s meeting [1]. According to the Associated Press, U.S. officials have made it clear that Trump will not meet with Zelensky unless he is willing to accept a negotiation plan with Russia.[1]\nViolent clashes at White House meeting From peaceful beginnings to violent quarrels The atmosphere at the beginning of the meeting was relatively friendly, and it was reported that within the first half hour, Trump and Zelensky expressed politeness and respect to each other.[1] Trump even expressed his willingness to continue to provide some military assistance to Ukraine until a lasting peace agreement with Russia is reached [1]. However, the situation took a turn for the worse when Zelensky expressed distrust of Putin\u0026rsquo;s ceasefire commitment[1].\nThe key turning point for the deterioration of the situation occurred in Zelensky\u0026rsquo;s speech. He directly called Putin a \u0026ldquo;murderer and terrorist\u0026rdquo; and expressed the hope that Trump could stop Putin with a tough stance [3]. This comment obviously offended Trump, who believed that Zelensky\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;hatred\u0026rdquo; for Putin was an obstacle to peace negotiations[1][3]. When Zelensky tried to explain that Russia had repeatedly violated the ceasefire agreement, Vice President Vance intervened and scolded him for \u0026ldquo;it is disrespectful to try to argue in the Oval Office in front of the American media\u0026rdquo;[1][3].\nTrump and Vance’s accusations Trump issued a stern warning to Zelensky, directly threatening: \u0026ldquo;You either make a deal or we withdraw. If we withdraw, you fight on your own. I don\u0026rsquo;t think the outcome will be very good, but you will fight.\u0026quot;[3] He further accused Zelensky of \u0026ldquo;risking World War III\u0026rdquo; and said that Zelensky\u0026rsquo;s behavior was \u0026ldquo;very disrespectful to a country that supports you more than many people think it should\u0026rdquo;[1][3].During the debate, Trump exaggerated the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine, claiming that it had provided $350 billion, while the actual figure was less than $200 billion[2]. He also claimed that without US military support, the conflict could have ended \u0026ldquo;within two weeks\u0026rdquo;[2]. Trump made it clear that he was in the \u0026ldquo;middle ground\u0026rdquo; and had no \u0026ldquo;alignment\u0026rdquo; with Putin, but he was dissatisfied with Zelensky\u0026rsquo;s hatred of Putin and believed that this made it difficult for him to broker an agreement[1][3].\nVance became more aggressive in the argument, asking Zelensky if he had ever said \u0026ldquo;thank you\u0026rdquo; once.[3] He pointed out that Ukraine is \u0026ldquo;forcibly recruiting frontline soldiers because you have a manpower problem\u0026rdquo; and said that Zelensky \u0026ldquo;should thank the president for trying to end this conflict\u0026rdquo; [3]. Vance also suggested that the previous Biden administration’s condemnation of Putin only prolonged the conflict [2].\nZelensky’s response Zelensky has tried to defend himself in the face of these accusations. When Vance mentioned \u0026ldquo;diplomacy\u0026rdquo; as the path to peace, Zelensky asked: \u0026ldquo;What kind of diplomacy are you referring to, JD?\u0026rdquo; and cited examples of Russia\u0026rsquo;s past ceasefire violations [1]. He also reminded Vance that Putin had violated the agreement during the Trump administration in 2019[2].\nWhen accused of lacking gratitude, Zelensky tried to express more gratitude, but was interrupted by Trump.[2] In a particularly poignant moment, Zelensky said to Vance: \u0026ldquo;First of all, during the war, everyone had problems, including you. But you had beautiful oceans that you can\u0026rsquo;t feel now, but you will in the future.\u0026quot;[3] This comment immediately triggered a counterattack from Trump: \u0026ldquo;Don\u0026rsquo;t tell us what we will feel. We are trying to solve the problem. Don\u0026rsquo;t tell us what we will feel.\u0026quot;[3]\nConsequences and Impact of Conflict Immediate Consequences This fierce conflict led to the cancellation of the planned joint press conference and the signing of the economic agreement [1][3]. After the meeting, Trump asked Zelensky to leave the White House and issued a brief but stern statement on social media: \u0026ldquo;I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready to accept peace if the United States participates because he believes that our participation will give him a huge advantage in negotiations. I don\u0026rsquo;t want an advantage, I want peace. He disrespected the United States of America in the precious Oval Office. When he is ready to accept peace, he can come back.\u0026quot;[2][3]\nZelensky later appeared on Fox News in an attempt to repair damaged relations, saying that public disagreements with Trump and Vance \u0026ldquo;would be unhelpful to both parties.\u0026quot;[1] However, he insisted that Ukraine would not enter into peace discussions with Russia without receiving security guarantees against future aggression[1]. \u0026ldquo;This is a very sensitive issue for our people,\u0026rdquo; Zelensky added. \u0026ldquo;They just want to hear that the United States is on our side, not Russia, but us. That\u0026rsquo;s all.\u0026quot;[1]\nImpact on Ukraine’s future This diplomatic conflict seriously jeopardizes the future of U.S.-Ukraine relations and Kyiv’s ability to defend itself against Russian aggression [1]. Zelensky admitted in a Fox News interview that without the support of the United States, the situation in Ukraine will become more \u0026ldquo;difficult\u0026rdquo;[1]. The incident shows that the Trump administration\u0026rsquo;s support for Ukraine is rapidly waning, which may leave Ukraine in a weaker position in future peace negotiations.\nU.S. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, a defense advocate and a staunch supporter of Trump, had previously warned Zelensky to \u0026ldquo;not be fooled\u0026rdquo; when meeting with Trump [1]. The suggestion highlights concerns among many U.S. politicians about Trump\u0026rsquo;s diplomatic style and worries about Ukraine\u0026rsquo;s future prospects.## Changes in Diplomatic Relations and Geopolitical Significance\nTrump’s shift in foreign policy This conflict clearly demonstrates how Trump is shifting U.S. foreign policy toward his \u0026ldquo;America First\u0026rdquo; philosophy, far exceeding the policies of his first term.[1] The unexpected clash has been described as one of the most heated public disputes between global leaders in the Oval Office in recent times, with traditional diplomatic protocol devolving into accusations, shouting and apparent contempt.[1]\nThe incident occurred a week after U.S. allies tried to resolve differences between Washington and Kyiv, and they tried to persuade Trump not to overture Moscow.[1] On Monday, French President Macron met with Trump to discuss establishing a European-led peacekeeping force in Ukraine, aimed at deterring future Russian aggression and encouraging the US president to adopt a more skeptical attitude towards Putin [1].\nTrump’s attitude towards Putin All parties have observed that Trump shows a clear preference for Putin. When asked if he was \u0026ldquo;aligned\u0026rdquo; with Putin, Trump responded: \u0026ldquo;I\u0026rsquo;m not aligned with Putin. I\u0026rsquo;m not aligned with anyone. I\u0026rsquo;m aligned with the United States of America, for the good of the world. I\u0026rsquo;m aligned with the world, and I want to end this.\u0026quot;[3] However, he then suggested that Zelensky was the main obstacle to negotiations: \u0026ldquo;Do you see his hatred of Putin? It makes it very difficult for me to make a deal.\u0026quot;[3]\nTrump\u0026rsquo;s attitude toward Putin may stem from his belief that Russia was treated unfairly during his first term. He mentioned during the meeting: \u0026ldquo;Putin has been through a lot with me. He faced a fraudulent witch hunt, and they used him and Russia. Russia, Russia, Russia.\u0026quot;[2] This comment refers to the finding by US intelligence agencies that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to benefit Trump\u0026rsquo;s election.[2]\nJonathan Abbott (Susan Glasser), a journalist who has written books on Putin\u0026rsquo;s rise, commented: \u0026ldquo;Donald Trump has changed his position on the conflict, and I believe that context explains the conflict we just saw.\u0026quot;[2] This comment implies that Trump is now more aligned with Russia\u0026rsquo;s position than traditional U.S. support for Ukraine.\nConclusion The diplomatic dispute in the White House on February 28, 2025 marked a major turning point in the relationship between the United States and Ukraine, reflecting that the Trump administration\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;America First\u0026rdquo; foreign policy is completely reshaping the United States\u0026rsquo; position on the international stage. The open conflict not only damaged relations between the two countries but also exposed deep divisions in the Western alliance over its response to Russian aggression. Trump\u0026rsquo;s apparent tilt toward Putin contrasts with his harsh criticism of Zelensky, raising widespread concerns about a shift in the direction of U.S. foreign policy.\nFor Ukraine, the incident could mark a turning point in Western support, putting Kyiv in a more disadvantageous position in future peace talks. Zelensky’s predicament exemplifies the vulnerability of small-state leaders vis-à-vis the geopolitical interests of great powers, especially when the support of powerful allies begins to waver. As the Russian-Ukrainian conflict enters its fourth year, this White House spat could become a critical moment in determining the final resolution of the conflict, with repercussions that will extend far beyond the walls of the Oval Office and reshape the entire European security landscape.\nSources Trump\u0026rsquo;s Oval Office thrashing of Zelenskyy shows limits of Western allies\u0026rsquo; ability to sway US leader | AP News Zelensky invades Trump’s ‘disinformation space’ | CNN Politics Trump and Zelenskyy key takeaways: Oval Office meeting explodes into shouting match - ABC News Trump Berates Zelensky in Fiery Exchange at the White House - The New York Times Full transcript: Trump, Zelenskyy and Vance argue in the Oval Office | National Post Trump and Zelensky Clash in the Oval Office | Council on Foreign Relations 7. Trump objected to Zelenskyy disrespect, White House says apnews.com/article/zelenskyy-security-guarantees-trump-meeting-washington-eebdf97b663c2cdc9e51fa346b09591d What Trump and Zelenskyy said during their heated argument in the Oval Office | PBS News February 28, 2025: Donald Trump presidency news | CNN Politics Key takeaways from the fiery White House meeting with Trump and Zelenskyy | Donald Trump News | Al Jazeera Zelenskyy\u0026rsquo;s White House meeting ends in blowup with Trump and Vance over Ukraine\u0026rsquo;s future - CBS News 13. Full Meeting between President Trump, VP Vance and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy in Oval Office Understanding the fallout from the Trump-Zelenskyy Oval Office meeting | King\u0026rsquo;s College London Excerpts From the Fiery Exchange Between Trump and Zelensky at the White House - The New York Times The Trump-Zelenskyy meeting just blew up. What now? - Atlantic Council Trump and Zelenskiy clash, leaving Ukraine exposed in war with Russia | Reuters In Showdown With Zelensky, Trump Takes Offense on Putin’s Behalf - The New York Times 19. What U.S. lawmakers are saying about Trump and Zelenskyy’s clash at the White House | PBS News Tears and shock in Ukraine and Europe after heated Zelensky-Trump meeting Contentious Trump-Zelensky meeting threatens U.S. support for Ukraine Trump-Zelensky clash highlights Congress at a crossroads over foreign policy Trump’s Angry Meeting With Zelensky Prompts Reactions Worldwide World reacts to Zelenskiy-Trump Oval Office clash Trump Berates Zelensky in Fiery Exchange at the White House 26. Trump-Zelenskyy clash marks a defining turn away from U.S. defense of democracies Trump-Zelenskiy clash divides US Republicans, dims aid prospects Trump\u0026rsquo;s Zelenskiy outburst a culmination of weeks of frustration How they are reporting it: Trump and Zelenskiy\u0026rsquo;s Oval Office shouting match Lawmakers in US Congress react to Zelenskiy-Trump Oval Office clash Zelenskiy, Trump clash will accelerate US probe of fraud in Ukraine aide, senior official says 32. Inside the 139 minutes that upended the US-Ukraine alliance Trump touts fair deal with Zelenskiy at White House White House Talks Between Trump, Zelensky Collapse Week in Review: Trump Scolds Ukrainian President Zelenskyy Trump speech to Congress likely to be \u0026lsquo;imperial,\u0026rsquo; say analysts Trump, Zelenskyy, Vance Face Off In Oval Office Shouting Match—Here’s Everything They Said ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20250301/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn February 28, 2025, the meeting between Trump and Zelensky in the Oval Office of the White House turned into an unprecedented public conflict. This high-level meeting, which was originally intended to sign an important mining agreement, turned into a fierce quarrel due to differences between the two sides on the resolution of the Russia-Ukraine conflict. US Vice President Vance even accused Zelensky of not being grateful enough for US assistance. The diplomatic conflict, which occurred on live television, sharply deteriorated relations between the two countries. Trump eventually canceled the joint press conference and asked Zelensky to leave the White House, using social media to express that \u0026ldquo;he disrespected the sacred Oval Office of the United States.\u0026rdquo; This incident demonstrated the extreme manifestation of the Trump administration\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;America First\u0026rdquo; foreign policy and had a serious impact on the future destiny of Ukraine and the unity of the Western alliance. It also highlighted the fundamental change in Trump\u0026rsquo;s attitude towards Putin.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Breakdown of the Postwar Order: Trump and Zelensky's White House Clash"},{"content":"Recently, the hottest topic in the AI world has been DeepSeek . As a typical example of a Chinese team overtaking on a different track, it has been praised and criticized by groups with very different positions.\nLeaving aside the political and technical arguments, DeepSeek has genuinely made AI more accessible when viewed from the perspective of ordinary users and cost. Compared with overseas large-model providers such as OpenAI, DeepSeek is extremely cheap. For people who want to learn AI applications but have limited budgets, it is indeed one of the best choices.\nHowever, because of capacity limits and large-scale hacker attacks, DeepSeek\u0026rsquo;s official servers have often been unstable recently. That has caused plenty of inconvenience. Fortunately, the open-source nature of DeepSeek\u0026rsquo;s large models means they can be deployed on third-party servers. SiliconFlow is one such provider. In cooperation with Huawei Cloud , it offers API access to DeepSeek R1 at a low price, allowing users to use DeepSeek\u0026rsquo;s model capabilities through its interface.\nGetting a Third-Party DeepSeek API First, register an account on SiliconFlow\u0026rsquo;s website . You can use my referral code 1MwHUt0X; both you and I will receive 14 CNY in free credit, which can be used to try different models. If the free credit runs out and you want to top up, real-name verification is required, which is part of the local regulatory environment.\nAfter logging in to the SiliconFlow dashboard, you can see the large models it supports, including the popular DeepSeek R1.\nTo call these models, you first need to create your own API key. In the dashboard, click API Keys on the left, then click Create API Key in the upper-right corner.\nUsing DeepSeek R1 with Chatbox Chatbox is an open-source AI chatbot client. It supports almost all major platforms, including desktop, mobile, and web. It can call different AI models for conversation, image generation, coding, copywriting, and many other tasks.\nFor data security and privacy, all Chatbox runtime data is stored locally. In other words, Chatbox itself is only a tool that passes data to large models. It does not store your data on its own servers. Because of this, if you use Chatbox on multiple devices, settings and chat history do not automatically sync across them.\nSiliconFlow\u0026rsquo;s official documentation explains how to connect its API to Chatbox. Here are the key points.\nAfter installation, Chatbox opens the settings page on first launch. Older versions required adding a custom provider and setting the API domain to https://api.siliconflow.cn. Newer versions of Chatbox now support SiliconFlow natively. Just choose SILICONFLOW API as the model provider, enter your API key, and select the model you want to use.\nOne thing to note: SiliconFlow provides both Pro/deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 and deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1. Only the model without Pro can use the platform\u0026rsquo;s free credit. The Pro version requires paid balance. Do not choose the wrong one.\nAfter saving the configuration, you can start chatting with the model. Chatbox also includes many useful preset prompt scenarios, and they are worth trying.\nUsing DeepSeek R1 with the Cline Extension in VS Code For developers, Visual Studio Code is a very popular code editor, and it supports many AI extensions. With these extensions, VS Code can call SiliconFlow\u0026rsquo;s DeepSeek R1 API for AI-assisted programming.\nAfter downloading and installing VS Code, search for AI-related extensions in the marketplace. One example is Cline , a plugin that can call different large models to help users write code. It goes beyond simple code completion or technical Q\u0026amp;A. Cline supports OpenRouter, DeepSeek, OpenAI, Google Gemini, GCP Vertex, and other API providers. You can also configure any OpenAI-compatible API, or use local models through LM Studio or Ollama.\nOpen VS Code, click the extensions button on the left, search for Cline, and click Install on the Cline page.\nAfter installation, click the Cline icon on the left to open the plugin. Then click the settings button in the upper-right corner and configure the API:\nAPI Provider: OpenAI Compatible Base URL: https://api.siliconflow.cn/ API Key: your SiliconFlow API key Model ID: deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 Finally, click save. You can now write code by chatting with the model. Cline supports one-click creation of folders and files. Used properly, even someone with no programming background can build small programs based on their needs.\nClosing Thoughts When DeepSeek\u0026rsquo;s official servers occasionally fail to connect, SiliconFlow\u0026rsquo;s third-party API can still provide smooth access to DeepSeek R1. Combined with Chatbox and VS Code, it can support both everyday AI conversations and professional coding assistance.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20250207/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently, the hottest topic in the AI world has been \u003ca href=\"https://www.deepseek.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eDeepSeek\u003c/a\u003e\n. As a typical example of a Chinese team overtaking on a different track, it has been praised and criticized by groups with very different positions.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eLeaving aside the political and technical arguments, DeepSeek has genuinely made AI more accessible when viewed from the perspective of ordinary users and cost. Compared with overseas large-model providers such as OpenAI, DeepSeek is extremely cheap. For people who want to learn AI applications but have limited budgets, it is indeed one of the best choices.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Building AI-Assisted Apps with a Third-Party DeepSeek API"},{"content":"The French Quarter of New Orleans is world-famous for its unique culture and lively nightlife. 1 Bourbon Street, this ancient street, is the heart of the French Quarter and a must-stop for tourists to experience the charm of New Orleans. It is dotted with bars, restaurants and various entertainment venues, with flashing neon lights and deafening music. Whenever night falls, Bourbon Street transforms into a sea of ​​joy, where tourists sip cocktails, enjoy jazz, and feel the energy and passion of the city. Bourbon Street is even more lively on New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve, with people from all over the world gathering here to welcome the new year. However, the New Year of 2025 is destined to be a sleepless night for New Orleans. The midnight carnival had not yet ended. At 3:15 in the morning, a white pickup truck suddenly rushed into the crowded crowd on Bourbon Street. Screams and gunshots instantly tore apart the hustle and bustle of holiday joy\u0026hellip; The carnival city of Sugar Bowl instantly turned into a purgatory on earth. 14 people died and 35 people were injured. Behind these cold numbers are the brokenness of 14 families and the heavy damage to 35 lives.\nEvent history Surveillance footage recorded this horrifying scene: a white Ford pickup truck, in order to avoid a police car, rushed onto the sidewalk crazily and crashed into the unsuspecting crowd. Subsequently, the attacker jumped out of the car, armed with an AR-10 semi-automatic rifle and a Glock pistol, and fired wildly. Two police officers were injured in the crossfire. Eventually, three police officers arrived on the scene and shot the attacker dead. But those few minutes left scars on New Orleans\u0026rsquo; night that can never be erased. The FBI characterized the attack as a terrorist attack and quickly discovered the identity of the attacker. He is 42-year-old U.S. citizen Shamsud-Din Jabbar. Jabbar is a veteran from Texas. Before the incident, he rented a Ford F-150 pickup truck and carried an AR-15 rifle, a Glock pistol and an improvised explosive device in the car. He even left a will. Hours before the attack, Jabbar checked into a house he rented through an online platform in New Orleans and placed explosive devices there, but the devices did not detonate. The FBI released a photo of a refrigerated container containing an improvised explosive device. Is it a malfunction or is there another reason? In addition, Jabbar was wearing a body armor when committing the crime. There are various signs that this was a premeditated and well-prepared terrorist attack. The Ghost of ISIS What is even more shocking is that Jabbar posted multiple videos on social media a few hours before the attack, declaring his allegiance to ISIS and saying that he joined the organization last summer. At the time of the attack, a black ISIS flag hung prominently on the rear bumper of his truck. ISIS, the full name of \u0026ldquo;Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant\u0026rdquo;, also known as \u0026ldquo;Islamic State of Iraq and Syria\u0026rdquo; (ISIS) or \u0026ldquo;Daesh\u0026rdquo; (Daesh), is a transnational Sunni Islamist insurgency and terrorist organization. The organization originated from the Iraq War from 2003 to 2011 and was formerly known as Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).\nISIS is notorious for its acts of extreme violence and brutality, including mass executions of captives and minorities, sexual enslavement of women and girls, and beheadings of soldiers and civilians. In 2014, ISIS declared an ISIS-led caliphate after making significant territorial gains in Iraq. Within the territory it controls, ISIS kills, rapes and tortures members of other faiths and targets Sunni Muslims who deviate from its harsh interpretation of Islam. The international community has made a huge effort to eliminate ISIS. A U.S.-led military intervention ultimately drove ISIS from towns and cities in its self-proclaimed country. In October 2019, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was killed by U.S. forces in northern Syria. Although ISIS has been defeated, its ideological influence still exists, and some \u0026ldquo;lone wolf\u0026rdquo; attackers attracted by its extremist ideas will still launch terrorist attacks in the name of ISIS. The attacks in New Orleans may be one such example. Suspicion in Las Vegas Coincidentally, on the same day as the New Orleans terrorist attack, there was also a bombing in Las Vegas. A Tesla Cybertruck exploded outside the Trump Hotel in Las Vegas, causing minor injuries to seven people and killing the driver at the scene. The investigation revealed that the Cybertruck was loaded with gasoline cans, camping fuel cans and large fireworks bombs. Police found a body and a handgun in the exploded vehicle, and the deceased was identified as Matthew Livelsberger, 37, an active-duty soldier. Las Vegas police said the bombing appeared to be a \u0026ldquo;suicide tragedy.\u0026rdquo; Investigators believe Livelsberger shot himself while detonating explosives in the car. The FBI said there was no evidence Livelsberger was hostile to President-elect Trump and that he may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and other issues. The New Orleans attack and the Las Vegas bombing, both occurring on New Year\u0026rsquo;s Day, both using rented vehicles and causing casualties, have raised questions about whether the two incidents are related. What’s even more strange is that both cars were rented through the same online car rental platform, Turo. Despite these coincidences, the FBI said it has found no clear connection between the two incidents. The attackers in New Orleans clearly intended to cause mass casualties, while the bombing in Las Vegas looked more like a suicide. However, as the investigation deepens, the connection between the two incidents may become more confusing\u0026hellip;\n##American Nightmare\nIn this tragedy, 14 lives were lost. They include students, workers, and beloved family members, ranging in age from 18 to 63, with most in their 20s. They came from Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, New York, New Jersey, and even visitors from the United Kingdom. Their stories are heartbreaking.\nKareem Badawi, 18, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, is a freshman at the University of Alabama. 30 He had excellent grades, was friendly to his friends, and was full of vision for the future. Unfortunately, he was killed in this attack. 30 His friends found it difficult to accept this fact and could only commemorate him with tattoos. 30 41\nMartin “Tiger” Bech, 27, from New York City, a former Princeton University football star player who worked in bond trading in the cybersecurity field in New York City after graduation. 31 His coaches and teammates remember him as a dynamic, talented athlete. 32 His brother Jack wrote on social media: \u0026ldquo;Love you forever brother! You inspire me every day and now you can be with me every moment. I will take care of my family, don\u0026rsquo;t worry. This is for us.\u0026rdquo; 31\nNikyra Dedeaux, 18, from Gulfport, Mississippi, dreamed of becoming a nurse, but her dream faded just when her life was about to bloom. 33 Her friend Zion Parsons witnessed the moment the pickup truck plowed into her and is still terrified. 33 He said: \u0026ldquo;A truck hit the corner and then went on a rampage, like a movie scene, throwing people into the air. It hit her and threw her at least 30 feet away. I\u0026rsquo;m lucky to be alive.\u0026rdquo; 33\nReggie Hunter, 37, a father of two from Prairieville, Louisiana, died while celebrating New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve with his cousin. 8 His cousin, Shirell Robinson Jackson, said Hunter was always full of energy and loved to joke, and his passing has brought great sadness to the family. 8 She said: \u0026ldquo;He loved his children, his sisters, his dad, all of us. He didn\u0026rsquo;t deserve to die like this.\u0026rdquo; 8This terrorist attack shocked American society, and people from all walks of life expressed condolences and condemnation. Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry called it a \u0026ldquo;horrible act of violence\u0026rdquo; and said he and his wife were \u0026ldquo;praying for all the victims and first responders on the scene.\u0026rdquo; New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said New Orleans will not be intimidated by terrorism and will continue to host major events. U.S. President Joe Biden said the people of New Orleans sent a clear message: They will not let this attack or the attacker\u0026rsquo;s delusional ideology overcome us. He also said that the United States will continue to pursue ISIS and other terrorist organizations relentlessly, and they will not find any safe harbor here. However, tragedy has occurred and the lives lost cannot be restored. This incident has once again sounded the alarm for American social security.\nAlarm bells ringing In recent years, extremism has risen in American society, political polarization has intensified, and social divisions have become severe. These are all breeding grounds for terrorism. The COVID-19 epidemic, racial inequality, political elections and other factors have led to a surge in demonstrations and counter-demonstrations in some urban areas in the United States. Individuals and groups with opposing ideologies have confronted each other, leading to a spiral of radicalization, extreme speech and violence. This phenomenon is often referred to as mutual radicalization. The popularity of the Internet has also facilitated the spread of terrorism. Some extremist organizations, such as the \u0026ldquo;digital caliphate\u0026rdquo;, use online platforms to recruit members, spread extremist ideas, and incite hatred and violence. In addition, problems such as racial discrimination and religious conflicts in American society have also intensified social conflicts and provided soil for the occurrence of terrorism. The United States’ counterterrorism strategy must keep pace with the times in order to effectively deal with emerging threats such as the “digital caliphate”.\nThe New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve terrorist attacks in New Orleans not only claimed 14 innocent lives, but also caused deep pain to American society and raised concerns about American national security and social cohesion. This incident once again reminds us that terrorism is the common enemy of mankind and requires the international community to work together to deal with it. At the same time, we also need to reflect on how we can eliminate the breeding ground for terrorism, such as online extremism and social polarization, and build a more peaceful and secure world. This requires the joint efforts of the government, society and individuals to strengthen supervision, promote dialogue, eliminate barriers and enhance understanding, so as to effectively prevent similar tragedies from happening again.\nSource Links Bourbon Street - Wikipedia Bourbon Street - 64 Parishes New Orleans mourns as Bourbon Street reopens after truck-ramming attack | In Pictures News | Al Jazeera 4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2025_New_Orleans_truck_attack New Orleans New Year’s Day ramming is the latest attack to use a vehicle as a deadly weapon | PBS News Victims of Bourbon Street attack in New Orleans include former Princeton football star, aspiring nurse, loving dad - CBS News New Orleans: What we know about the attack and suspect Shamsud-Din Jabbar At least 14 killed, dozens hurt on Bourbon Street in New Orleans as driver intentionally slams truck into crowd; attacker dead - CBS News New Orleans attacker acted alone, FBI now believes LIVE: Latest on deadly New Orleans terror attack investigation 5. What is the Islamic State group, and what attacks has it inspired? | AP News Islamic State - Wikipedia War against the Islamic State - Wikipedia Destroyed neighborhood in Raqqa - Islamic State - Wikipedia FBI suspects soldier behind Las Vegas Cybertruck blast suffered from PTSD | Crime News | Al Jazeera Investigation into Cybertruck explosion in Las Vegas shows driver shot himself before the blast, officials say - CBS News Las Vegas Cybertruck bombing outside Trump hotel appears to be suicide of veteran who had PTSD, FBI says - CBS News 12. Shocking connection between Tesla truck that exploded and pickup truck used in New Orleans massacre revealed - Hindustan Times Why the United States is Targeted by Terrorism | START.umd.edu ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20250105/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe French Quarter of New Orleans is world-famous for its unique culture and lively nightlife. 1 Bourbon Street, this ancient street, is the heart of the French Quarter and a must-stop for tourists to experience the charm of New Orleans. It is dotted with bars, restaurants and various entertainment venues, with flashing neon lights and deafening music. Whenever night falls, Bourbon Street transforms into a sea of ​​joy, where tourists sip cocktails, enjoy jazz, and feel the energy and passion of the city. Bourbon Street is even more lively on New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve, with people from all over the world gathering here to welcome the new year.\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"/images/blog20250105/BourbonStreet.jpg\"\u003e\nHowever, the New Year of 2025 is destined to be a sleepless night for New Orleans. The midnight carnival had not yet ended. At 3:15 in the morning, a white pickup truck suddenly rushed into the crowded crowd on Bourbon Street. Screams and gunshots instantly tore apart the hustle and bustle of holiday joy\u0026hellip; The carnival city of Sugar Bowl instantly turned into a purgatory on earth. 14 people died and 35 people were injured. Behind these cold numbers are the brokenness of 14 families and the heavy damage to 35 lives.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The New Orleans New Year's Eve Terror Attack"},{"content":"When I first started building this blog 4 years ago, I wrote a short article introducing some of the tools I used when building the website. Today, many of the tools mentioned in that article are obsolete. In addition to the overall migration of this blog and the use of the new PaperMod theme, the configuration methods of many functions have changed. So I decided to write another article to record some of the technical details of my tossing around with this new topic.\n#Configuration file syntax\nHugo also supports three configuration file syntaxes, namely YAML, TOML and JSON. They are all commonly used data serialization and configuration file formats, and each has its own characteristics and applicable scenarios.\nYAML (YAML Ain\u0026rsquo;t Markup Language) YAML is a human-readable data serialization format commonly used for configuration files and data exchange. Its syntax format is:\nname: John Doe age: 30 city: New York hobbies: - reading - traveling Its characteristics are:\nConcise syntax, easy to read and write\nSupports comments, multi-line strings and complex data structures\nUse indentation to indicate hierarchical relationships\nTOML (Tom\u0026rsquo;s Obvious, Minimal Language) TOML is a language designed to be a minimal configuration file format, designed to be easy to read and write. Its syntax is:\n[person] name = \u0026#34;John Doe\u0026#34; age = 30 city = \u0026#34;New York\u0026#34; [person.hobbies] favorite = \u0026#34;reading\u0026#34; others = [\u0026#34;traveling\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;photography\u0026#34;] Its characteristics are:\nThe syntax is intuitive and easy to understand\nSupport comments\nSupports multiple data types, including date and time\nAllows creation of nested data structures\nJSON (JavaScript Object Notation) JSON is a lightweight data exchange format, originally derived from JavaScript, but now widely used in various programming languages. Its syntax format is:\n{ \u0026#34;name\u0026#34;: \u0026#34;John Doe\u0026#34;, \u0026#34;age\u0026#34;: 30, \u0026#34;city\u0026#34;: \u0026#34;New York\u0026#34; } Its characteristics are:\nConcise and easy to read\nFast parsing speed\nHighly compatible with JavaScript\nSupport basic data types: string, number, boolean, null, object and array\nConsidering the readability and compatibility with the current theme, the configuration file syntax I chose is YAML. All the following configuration commands will be presented in YAML format. It is worth noting that YAML is very sensitive to indentation. When rendering with Hugo, even if a line is missing a space, the rendering will fail, so pay special attention.\nAdd article timeline page (Archives) Create a new archieves.md in the /Content/ directory and write the following content:\n--- title: \u0026#34;Archive\u0026#34; layout: \u0026#34;archives\u0026#34; url: \u0026#34;/archives/\u0026#34; summary: archives --- #Add search page (Search)\nStep 1: Add the following content in the configuration file config.yml:\noutputs: home: - HTML - RSS - JSON # required for the search page Step 2: Create a new archieves.md in the /Content/ directory and write the following content:\n--- title: \u0026#34;Search\u0026#34; # use any language you prefer layout: \u0026#34;search\u0026#34; # required for the search page # url: \u0026#34;/archive\u0026#34; # description: \u0026#34;Description for Search\u0026#34; summary: \u0026#34;search\u0026#34; placeholder: \u0026#34;Enter search keywords here\u0026#34; --- #Add menu\nAdd the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nmenu: main: - name: Posts url: archives weight: 5 - name: Search url: search/ weight: 10 - name: Tags url: tags/ weight: 10 - name: About url: about/ weight: 10 Enable Emoji \u0026#x2705; Hugo natively supports Emoji rendering, just add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nenableEmoji: true In this way, as long as you enter :emojiname: ​​that conforms to Markdown syntax in the .md file (write the Emoji name between two half-width colons), you can enter an Emoji. You can query the Emoji names in Markdown syntax in this list .\nAdd Favicon icon You can refer to my article , visit this website , convert your favorite site icon image into Favicon special format, and put all the generated files in the /static/ directory.\nOptional: If you want to put the icon file into a subdirectory of /static/, such as /static/favicon/, you also need to add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: assets: favicon: \u0026#34;/favicon/favicon.ico\u0026#34; favicon16x16: \u0026#34;/favicon/favicon-16x16.png\u0026#34; favicon32x32: \u0026#34;/favicon/favicon-32x32.png\u0026#34; apple_touch_icon: \u0026#34;/favicon/apple-touch-icon.png\u0026#34; safari_pinned_tab: \u0026#34;/favicon/safari-pinned-tab.svg\u0026#34; Enable code copy button Add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: ShowCodeCopyButtons: true The page turn button displays the page number Add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: ShowPageNums: true Add an RSS subscription button to the article list page Add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: ShowRssButtonInSectionTermList: true RSS Feed output full text Add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: ShowFullTextinRss: true Open external links in new tabs Create a new render-link.html in the /themes/theme name/layouts/_default/_markup/ directory and write the following content:\n\u0026lt;a href=\u0026#34;{{ .Destination | safeURL }}\u0026#34;{{ with .Title}} title=\u0026#34;{{ . }}\u0026#34;{{ end }}{{ if strings.HasPrefix .Destination \u0026#34;http\u0026#34; }} target=\u0026#34;_blank\u0026#34; rel=\u0026#34;noopener\u0026#34;{{ end }}\u0026gt;{{ .Text | safeHTML }}\u0026lt;/a\u0026gt; Customize hyperlink style PaperMod theme supports custom CSS. We can change the default hyperlink style of the website through custom CSS, such as color, underline, and changes when the mouse is hovered.\nCreate a new custom.css in the /themes/theme name/assets/css/extended/ directory and write the following content:\n.post-content a { color: #0969da; box-shadow: none; text-decoration: none; } .post-content a:hover { text-decoration: underline; } This code will set the hyperlink color in the article content to blue (#0969da) and add an underline on mouseover.\nSEO optimization related SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a method of improving a website\u0026rsquo;s natural ranking in search engine results pages by optimizing its content and structure. The goal of SEO is to increase the organic traffic of the website, improve the visibility of the website, and attract more target audiences. To do SEO optimization for Hugo site, we need to do the following:\nConfiguration file optimization Add the website description in the configuration file config.yml:\nparams: description: \u0026#34;Your site description\u0026#34; Similarly, we can also set the title, keywords and description for each article, and add the following content at the head of the .md file to define the basic information of the article:\n--- title: \u0026#34;Post Title\u0026#34; keywords: - keyword1 - keyword2 description: \u0026#34;Post description\u0026#34; --- Create sitemap sitemap A sitemap is an important website document that provides search engines and users with an overview of your website\u0026rsquo;s structure. To create a sitemap for a Hugo site, add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nsitemap: changefreq: weekly filename: sitemap.xml priority: 0.5 Among them, changefreq represents the update frequency, filename represents the generated site map file name, and priority represents the default priority of the page. In this way, Hugo will generate a sitemap.xml file in the root directory of the website so that search engines can understand the website structure.\nCreate robots.txt crawler index Robots.txt is a plain text file located in the root directory of the website. It is used to submit the sitemap to search engines and instruct search engines how to access and index the website content. To create a robots.txt for a Hugo site, add the following content to the configuration file config.yml:\nenableRobotsTXT: true In this way, Hugo will automatically generate the Robots.txt file in the root directory of the website.\nReference link Introduction | Hugo Home · adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod Wiki Tossing Hugo \u0026amp; PaperMod Theme - Dvel\u0026rsquo;s Blog Build Hugo’s personal website | PaperMod theme | ed PaperMod theme configuration | 🚀 Tian Shaohan’s personal blog ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20241230/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen I first started building this blog 4 years ago, I wrote a short \u003ca href=\"/post/blog20200310/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003earticle\u003c/a\u003e\n introducing some of the tools I used when building the website. Today, many of the tools mentioned in that article are obsolete. In addition to the overall migration of this blog and the use of the new \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePaperMod\u003c/a\u003e\n theme, the configuration methods of many functions have changed. So I decided to write another article to record some of the technical details of my tossing around with this new topic.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Technical Notes on Building a Site with Hugo and PaperMod"},{"content":"At 9:25 am on December 25, 2024, a plane carrying 67 people crashed near Aktau International Airport in Kazakhstan. The accident killed 38 people and shocked the world. Until now, the truth behind the accident has not been fully revealed. Shrouded in fog, the cause, impact and follow-up of the accident are attracting the attention of the world.\nAccident background The incident took place in Aktau, located in western Kazakhstan and on the coast of the Caspian Sea. The city\u0026rsquo;s name means \u0026ldquo;white mountains\u0026rdquo; in Kazakh because Aktau\u0026rsquo;s landscape and cityscape appear pale in hue when viewed from the Caspian Sea. According to 2019 statistics, Aktau has a permanent population of only 180,000 people. Initially, this area developed due to oil exploration, and even today, it still has a strong industrial atmosphere. However, it was in this small lakeside town that a sudden disaster broke the tranquility.\nThe J2-8243 flight that caused the accident was an international flight of Azerbaijan Airlines, flying from Baku, the capital of Azerbaijan, to Grozny International Airport in Russia. The aircraft type of the flight is an E190AR passenger aircraft produced by Embraer, which is a short- to medium-range narrow-body passenger aircraft. The aircraft is 36 meters long and can accommodate 98 to 114 people. In the early morning of December 25, at Baku International Airport, the flight departure time was approaching, and passengers were boarding the plane one after another. Following the tower\u0026rsquo;s instructions, the aircraft began to taxi onto the runway. At this time, the passengers may not realize that this supposedly ordinary flight is flying in a direction full of unknowns and crises.\nWhat happened after the accident A quick look at the map reveals that the flight took off from Baku, Azerbaijan, and was destined for Grozny in the northwest. However, the plane finally crossed the entire Caspian Sea and flew to Aktau on the other side of the lake, which was obviously inconsistent with common sense**. Flight tracking website Flightrader24 showed that the GPS signal of the flight from Baku to Grozny was abnormally interfered when it crossed the Russian border. Immediately afterwards, the flight began to deviate from its original route, first heading west, and then turning 180 degrees and flying east towards the Caspian Sea. Finally, he arrived at Aktau on the other side of the Caspian Sea and requested an emergency landing from the local control tower. According to a New York Times interview with a crash survivor, everything on the flight started out as normal. However, as the flight continued, some passengers began to notice strange vibrations—at first it was a slight bump that was almost unnoticed; then it became a more violent tremor, the clouds outside the window rolled, and there was a small noise in the cabin. Then, a violent vibration almost threw everyone from their seats. Oxygen masks fell from overhead, and chaotic shouts erupted in the cabin. Passengers scrambled to grab their masks, trying to regain their composure. The crew\u0026rsquo;s voices also became raspy now, but not entirely clear. At this moment, they realized that this was not a simple air turbulence, but some kind of more deadly threat.\nIt is not difficult to see from the video shot by local residents that during the emergency landing of the plane, although the pilot tried his best to control the landing posture of the plane, the huge impact and instantaneous stall had caused the aircraft fuselage to lose balance. In the end, the plane dived to the ground at an excessive angle. The right wing touched the ground first, then rolled and exploded, splitting the body into two parts. The nose section was destroyed by the explosion the moment it touched the ground, and the tail section was upside down outside the main wreckage.\nPublic data shows that there were 67 people on the accident flight, of which 37 were from Azerbaijan, accounting for more than half; followed by 16 people from Russia, 6 people from Kazakhstan, and 3 people from Kyrgyzstan. Moments before the accident, a passenger filmed the situation inside the cabin with his mobile phone. This was an extremely serious air crash. 38 of the 67 people on board were killed. Among the last survivors, there are also patients with serious injuries such as brain injuries, concussions, chest injuries, and traumatic shock. The day after the accident, the president of Azerbaijan declared national mourning.\nAnalysis of accident causes After the accident, the Russian Federal Air Transport Agency issued a statement stating that it was initially believed that the plane was hit by a flock of birds. Due to an emergency on board, the captain decided to divert to Aktau Airport. But is this really the case?\nIt is not difficult to see from the video taken at the accident scene that there are many traces similar to single holes on the wreckage of the plane involved. Combined with the abnormal GPS interference information displayed on the Flightrader24 website, we have to wonder whether the accident is related to the air defense system in Russia.\nSince the Russian-Ukrainian war broke out in February 2022, Russia has been full of gunpowder near its borders in Central Asia and Eastern Europe. Just before the accident occurred on December 21, Ukraine launched a drone air strike on the city of Kazan in Russia, causing damage to two high-rise residential buildings in the city. This was the rare time Ukraine launched an air strike on a city in Russia since the outbreak of the war. In this case, Russia\u0026rsquo;s air defense system has been on high alert.\nTherefore, Emirates Flight 8243 was probably shot down by the Russian air defense system. When the aircraft flew near the Russian border, it was misidentified by the Russian air defense system, resulting in GPS interference and anti-aircraft shooting. And because the nearby airport was unable to land due to heavy fog, the captain had to change direction and control the damaged fuselage to fly toward the Caspian Sea in the east. Finally, the emergency landing failed in Kazakhstan on the coast of the Caspian Sea, causing the plane to crash.\nSeveral Reuters reports echoed the same sentiment. The agency quoted some survivors of the accident as saying that they heard several loud bangs as the plane approached its original destination of Grozny; four sources familiar with the preliminary results of the accident investigation said that the accident plane was hit by a Russian Pantsir-S surface-to-air missile system. As the plane approached Grozny, the aircraft\u0026rsquo;s communication system was disabled by the electronic warfare system.\nAlthough the final investigation report of the accident has not been released so far, we cannot 100% conclude that the accident was related to Russia. But in history, Russia has been linked to civil aviation disasters more than once.\nSimilar accidents As early as 10 years ago, it was during the Crimean crisis in Ukraine. On July 17, 2014, at 12:15 noon, Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 took off from Amsterdam Airport in the Netherlands and flew to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. At 16:20 p.m., the Boeing 777-200ER passenger plane flying the flight suddenly crashed while cruising in the airspace of eastern Ukraine. All 283 passengers and 15 crew members on board were killed. The accident investigation report shows that Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 was destroyed by a Buk missile launched by the Russian military. However, Russian officials have so far denied that the crash was caused by a Russian attack, and claimed that the Ukrainian Air Force was the real culprit of the accident. Since the invention of civil aviation, air crashes, large and small, have never stopped. Whether it is the Emirates Airline 8243 crash or the Malaysian Airlines MH17 crash ten years ago, it is a profound warning. Whether it is due to technical failure, bad weather, or human error, the occurrence of air crashes always brings profound pain and reflection. However, behind some air disasters, there are heavier costs hidden - wars, terrorist attacks, and political struggles. These innocent lives were taken away due to global strife and conflicts. They were not only passengers on the flight, but also ordinary people like you and me. They also had dreams, families, and life trajectories of their own.\nOur memory of the deceased is also a memory of ourselves. The death knell is tolling alone for everyone. In the future, we must appeal to the voices of peace and seek a more rational and tolerant world order. Let the departed souls find peace, and let all families no longer suffer innocent destruction due to disputes.\nSource Links [Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crash - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E9%98%BF%E5%A1%9E%E6%8B%9C%E7 %96%86%E8%88%AA%E7%A9%BA8243%E5%8F%B7%E7%8F%AD%E6%9C%BA%E7%A9%BA%E9%9A%BE)\nAktau - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Embraer E Series - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Flight history for Azerbaijan Airlines flight J28243 Kazakhstan Plane Crash Survivors Describe Chaos on Azerbaijan Airlines Flight - The New York Times Azerbaijan Airlines passenger plane crashed; Russian regulators believe there was an emergency after colliding with a flock of birds - RTHK 7. [Ukrainian drones penetrate deep into Russian territory Hitting high-floor apartments in Kazan](https://www.rfi.fr/cn/%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85%E6%8A%A5%E9%81%93/20241222-%E4%B9%8C%E5%85%8B%E5%85%B0%E6%97%A0%E4%BA%BA%E6%9C %BA%E6%B7%B1%E5%85%A5%E4%BF%84%E5%A2%83-%E5%87%BB%E4%B8%AD%E5%96% 80%E5%B1%B1%E5%B8%82%E9%AB%98%E6%A5%BC%E5%B1%82%E5%85%AC%E5%AF%93)\nExclusive: Survivors on Azerbaijani plane say they heard bangs before it went down | Reuters Russian air-defense system downed Azerbaijan plane, sources say | Reuters [Preliminary investigation shows that the Azerbaijan Airlines flight was shot down by Russian air defense forces](https://www.rfi.fr/cn/%E5%9B%BD%E9%99%85/20241226 -%E5%88%9D%E6%AD%A5%E8%B0%83%E6%9F%A5%E6%98%BE%E7%A4%BA%E9%98%BF%E5%A1%9E%E6%8B %9C%E7%96%86%E8%88%AA%E7%A9%BA%E5%85%AC%E5%8F%B8%E8%88%AA%E7%8F%AD%E8%A2%AB%E4 %BF%84%E7%BD%97%E6%96%AF%E9%98%B2%E7%A9%BA%E9%83%A8%E9%98%9F%E5%87%BB%E8%90%BD)\nPantsir-S1 missile - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 12. Investigation by the Dutch Safety Board | MH17 incident | Government.nl ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20241228/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt 9:25 am on December 25, 2024, a plane carrying 67 people crashed near Aktau International Airport in Kazakhstan. The accident killed 38 people and shocked the world. Until now, the truth behind the accident has not been fully revealed. Shrouded in fog, the cause, impact and follow-up of the accident are attracting the attention of the world.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"accident-background\"\u003eAccident background\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe incident took place in Aktau, located in western Kazakhstan and on the coast of the Caspian Sea. The city\u0026rsquo;s name means \u0026ldquo;white mountains\u0026rdquo; in Kazakh because Aktau\u0026rsquo;s landscape and cityscape appear pale in hue when viewed from the Caspian Sea. According to 2019 statistics, Aktau has a permanent population of only 180,000 people. Initially, this area developed due to oil exploration, and even today, it still has a strong industrial atmosphere. However, it was in this small lakeside town that a sudden disaster broke the tranquility.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"2024 Azerbaijan Airlines Flight 8243 crash"},{"content":"Background I introduced the installation and configuration method of Home Assistant in an article in April 2022. At that time, to connect Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s many smart homes to HA, we had to install a third-party HA integration, namely Hass-Xiaomi-Miot . It is released on GitHub by an individual developer al-one and has always been our only choice to connect Mijia to HA. Until recently, Xiaomi released the official HA integration on GitHub: HA_Xiaomi_Home , filling the gap of Mijia access to HA.\nAlthough this is another story of \u0026ldquo;officials forcing a fan to death\u0026rdquo;, Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s open source spirit is still worthy of praise. Compared with third-party integration, Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s official integration has better support for its own products and can help us connect Mijia to HA more easily, thereby realizing the interconnection between Mijia and the Homekit ecosystem. Today, we will follow the official document of HA_Xiaomi_Home to introduce in detail the installation and use of this integration.\nInstall Mijia official integration through HASC Mijia officially integrates a variety of installation methods, among which the simplest and most novice-friendly method is to install through HACS . For details on the installation method of HASC, please refer to my article, and I will not go into details here. Since Mijia official integration has not yet been added to the official library of HASC, we need to add the Mijia official integrated library link to the HASC directory by adding a custom library link. Log in to the HA backend, click HASC on the left, then click the three dots in the upper right corner, select Custom Repositories, and create a new custom library link, as shown in the figure below. Select Integration for the library type (Catagory); fill in the following link for the library link:\nhttps://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home.git Finally, click the ADD button. If there is no problem with the network, the Mijia officially integrated installation link will be added to the HASC custom directory. Then click Settings - Devices and Integration - Add Integration, enter Xiaomi in the search box, and select XIaomi Home in the pop-up results. Next, follow the prompts to log in to your Mijia account. Note: warning:: If you are like me and use Docker as the HA installation environment, then there is a high probability that you will encounter the problem of being unable to jump during Mijia account verification. The core reason why it cannot jump is that the Mijia official integration uses the local domain name homeassistant.local:8123 by default to jump back to the HA page, and the HA in the Docker container cannot broadcast the .local local domain name in the local LAN. Therefore, when verifying the Mijia account and jumping back to the HA page, we need to manually change homeassistant.local:8123 in the browser address bar to IP:8123. This will complete the verification of Mijia account. The above method refers to Issue#8 from the Mijia integrated warehouse. Disable redundant Mijia entities After we install Mijia official integration and complete account verification, HA will automatically search and add various Mijia devices. At the same time, a tangle of entities will appear in our homes. The so-called entity (Unit) is a concept used by HA to define the smallest sub-functional unit of the device. Usually a device corresponds to multiple entities. For example, a \u0026ldquo;water heater\u0026rdquo; device can have multiple entities such as \u0026ldquo;current water temperature\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;target water temperature\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;preheating switch\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;boost switch\u0026rdquo; at the same time.\nHowever, in daily use, we do not need to split each device into many fragmented sub-functional units. This is not only confusing, but also makes our home interface extremely cumbersome. Therefore, before linking HA to Homekit, we need to filter the many entities added by Mijia integration and only retain the switches and values ​​we need most in our daily use.\nClick Settings - Devices and Integration - Entities, click the entity we don\u0026rsquo;t need in the list, close the entity in the pop-up dialog box, and finally click Save. In this way, we deactivate an entity that is not needed. Bridge HA to Homekit After filtering out unnecessary Mijia entities, we can bridge HA to Homekit. For most people, the only purpose of connecting Mijia to HA is to connect Mijia and Homekit. Homekit is Apple\u0026rsquo;s native smart home protocol, which allows users to directly control home appliances on Apple devices such as iOS, Mac and Apple Watch without resorting to third-party apps. As we all know, the Homekit home ecosystem is far less prosperous than Mijia, and most products that support the Homekit protocol are expensive. Therefore, if you connect Mijia Ecosystem to Homekit, you can achieve both convenience and cost-effectiveness. HA is the best bridge between Mijia and Homekit.\nTo bridge the HA entity to Homekit, we need to install another integration: Homekit Bridge . Click Settings - Devices and Integration - Add Integration, enter Homekit Bridge in the search box, and then follow the prompts to install. After the installation is complete, a QR code will pop up in the HA notification bar. Open the Home APP of the Apple device, click the plus sign in the upper right corner - Add Accessories, and scan the QR code in the notification to bridge all existing entities on the HA to the Home APP.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20241227/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"background\"\u003eBackground\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI introduced the installation and configuration method of \u003ca href=\"https://www.home-assistant.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHome Assistant\u003c/a\u003e\n in \u003ca href=\"/post/blog20220409/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ean article\u003c/a\u003e\n in April 2022. At that time, to connect Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s many smart homes to HA, we had to install a third-party HA integration, namely \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/al-one/hass-xiaomi-miot\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHass-Xiaomi-Miot\u003c/a\u003e\n. It is released on GitHub by an individual developer \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/al-one\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eal-one\u003c/a\u003e\n and has always been our only choice to connect Mijia to HA. Until recently, \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/XiaoMi\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eXiaomi\u003c/a\u003e\n released the official HA integration on GitHub: \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/XiaoMi/ha_xiaomi_home\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHA_Xiaomi_Home\u003c/a\u003e\n, filling the gap of Mijia access to HA.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Installing and Using Home Assistant's Official Mi Home Integration"},{"content":"About the Move For personal reasons, I deleted my Google account earlier this year. As a result, my old GitHub account could no longer pass 2FA, which meant I could no longer update articles at my old blog address . So I registered a new GitHub account and moved the old posts here.\nI wonder how many people had bookmarked the old address. From their point of view, I may have simply stopped updating forever. That is one of the biggest drawbacks of publishing personal writing on a low-social static blog: there is no real way to contact readers. I cannot forward this migration notice to any old reader, which is a real pity \u0026#x1f61e;.\nSince I changed both the GitHub account and the blog address, I also changed my pen name from Bright to Mason. Bright, a name that never sounded all that native, actually came from one of my favorite video games, The Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky. Bright is the family name of the game\u0026rsquo;s protagonists. During graduate school, my Legal English teacher, an old San Francisco boy named David, once gently told me that Bright did not really suit me. So I started using Mason, a more natural English name, though I still like the word Bright very much \u0026#x1f642;.\nI am saying all this for any old readers who may happen to find the new blog: Bright and Mason are the same person. But perhaps saying it is pointless. Let it all go with the wind \u0026#x1f44b;.\nAbout the Theme Change I have always used Hugo to generate my static blog. The method is described in this post . The old theme was Hugo-fuji , created by a Chinese developer. It was clean and simple, and I liked it a lot.\nUnfortunately, newer versions of Hugo deprecated several modules that Hugo-fuji depended on, making the theme incompatible with the current version of Hugo. The author also seems to have stopped maintaining the project two or three years ago. So I had to change themes.\nAfter looking around, I found that there really are not many simple and good-looking themes. In the end I chose Hugo-PaperMod , which is the theme you see now. It supports more customization and adapts well across platforms, though it is not as simple to use as Hugo-fuji.\nThat is all my rambling about moving the blog and changing themes. I hope it was not too tedious. I will keep updating posts here and try to post a little more often. As for YouTube and the podcast, I also want to restart them. Who knows how long I can keep it up this time?\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20241226/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"about-the-move\"\u003eAbout the Move\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor personal reasons, \u003cstrong\u003eI deleted my Google account earlier this year. As a result, my \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/ibrights/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eold GitHub account\u003c/a\u003e\n could no longer pass 2FA, which meant I could no longer update articles at my \u003ca href=\"https://ibrights.github.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eold blog address\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/strong\u003e. So I registered a new \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/masonblog/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGitHub account\u003c/a\u003e\n and moved the old posts here.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI wonder how many people had bookmarked the old address. From their point of view, I may have simply stopped updating forever. That is one of the biggest drawbacks of publishing personal writing on a low-social static blog: there is no real way to contact readers. I cannot forward this migration notice to any old reader, which is a real pity \u0026#x1f61e;.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Few Notes on Moving This Blog"},{"content":"For me, 2023 was without doubt a long year. At the end of the year, media outlets and independent creators made their usual year-in-review pieces. Whenever I saw those summaries and happened to read news from early 2023, I was surprised that it had happened in 2023 rather than earlier, in 2022 or 2021. That is unusual for someone about to turn thirty. In my memory, time only felt slow when I was a confused and idle child.\nWhy Resist the Void In 2023, I went through many changes in work and relationships. Fortunately, most of them have now been resolved, but new problems keep appearing. I cannot say whether I, or the whole era, are still moving upward. The immense uncertainty of the future keeps pushing me toward nihilism.\nI am not someone who wants merely to scrape by. But as time passes, I feel more and more strongly the absurdity of the world and the emptiness of life as part of that absurd world.\nOn the last working day of 2023, I posted a WeChat Moments update summarizing my year in a few words: \u0026ldquo;work injury, surgery, moving, buying a car, proposal.\u0026rdquo; It was like writing a chronicle of someone in another universe who had nothing to do with me. My own experiences were reduced to a handful of plain words.\nIn the past, I arrogantly treated these insignificant experiences as part of my important personal history, recording them again and again in rough year-end summaries, as if that could resist the meaninglessness of life. Gradually I realized that the void of life does not exist only at the level of narration. It exists solidly. It is larger than our own existence, and older than our own history.\nDoes that mean we should accept the void? When we make choices that appear important, should we still take them seriously? If the world is absurd and life is empty, why struggle to choose at all?\nI thought about this for a long time, especially while lying in a hospital bed after a traffic accident. I still do not have a definite answer, but a vague idea has appeared in my mind: I want to resist the void.\nThe absurdity of the world may be unshakable, but that does not stop us from resisting the emptiness of life. \u0026ldquo;The emptiness of life\u0026rdquo; is a conclusion drawn from outcomes: no matter how hard we struggle, the final result may have no meaning. But perhaps we are not born to pursue a result, nor to create some grand meaning. The process of existing itself should be what we pursue.\nYears ago, someone seriously discussed a question with me: if we knew in advance that a relationship would not end well, should we still try to maintain it? At the time, I was unsure and did not understand the deeper meaning. Now I think it perfectly explains why we resist the void.\nThe meaning of a relationship does not lie in whether it ends well. It lies in whether it gives the people inside it moments of peace and joy. Even if I knew in advance that a relationship would have no result, I should still try to accept it, maintain it, and enjoy it. That is both the process of resisting the void and the reason to resist it.\nEven if we are entering a turbulent era, even if great risks are unavoidable, even if I may face more suffering, I still want to struggle with all my strength and enjoy the process of struggling. The purpose of resisting the void is not to eliminate it, but to accept and even enjoy it. I want to pursue inner peace and spiritual freedom before the building collapses, so that when the final judgment comes, I can smile and perish with the world.\nHow to Resist the Void If we want to resist the void, we need to find the right way.\nI grew up in an era that heavily stigmatized pre-Qin Confucianism. From the official sphere to ordinary public discourse, most people were either distorting and using Confucian thought, or attacking and rejecting it. Confucianism tells us to first cultivate ourselves, then order the family, then govern the state, and finally bring peace to the world. Our textbooks taught the reverse: put others before oneself, put the state before the family, and learn from Comrade Lei Feng.\nThis overly \u0026ldquo;modern\u0026rdquo; approach destroyed the original social structure. It pulled everyone away from their small natural communities and made them submit to a constructed larger community. Absurdity and emptiness became more visible, hovering over everyone and slowly eating away at life.\nTo resist this modern, imposed sense of emptiness, we need to return to an older place: to the original, more \u0026ldquo;natural\u0026rdquo; social structure, and to the thought rooted in that structure. That means early Confucian thought before later fusion and distortion.\nTo resist the void, we should first cultivate ourselves and then tend to the family. We should make ourselves calm and full, then make the household harmonious and secure, and only then consider those constructed concepts. The same approach applies when facing complex social events. We should first respect and care about the person, the human being, and only then turn to the other things made up of individual people. If everyone were willing to think and act this way, the world would surely become better.\nIn 2023, I was still struggling on the road of self-cultivation and family-building, and on the road of resisting the void. I tried hard at many things, and I messed up many things. In 2024, this will remain my theme. The most important part for me is self-cultivation. More specifically, it is staying humble.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20240215/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor me, 2023 was without doubt a long year. At the end of the year, media outlets and independent creators made their usual year-in-review pieces. Whenever I saw those summaries and happened to read news from early 2023, I was surprised that it had happened in 2023 rather than earlier, in 2022 or 2021. That is unusual for someone about to turn thirty. In my memory, time only felt slow when I was a confused and idle child.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Stay Humble, Resist the Void"},{"content":"In 2022, many things changed in our lives. For example, the sound of firecrackers, absent from cities for years, finally returned. The authorities kept issuing strict bans, but neither people\u0026rsquo;s long-repressed emotions nor an ancient tradition that has lasted for thousands of years on this land can simply be erased.\nIn 2022, we witnessed a low point of civilization. The great bell was cast aside while the clay pot rang; countless people suffered under the crushing weight of power. Fortunately, thunder still comes from silence, and the curve of civilizational decline still has temporary rebounds. Perhaps no one expected the fire in Urumqi to spread across the whole country. Between people and their long-lost courage, there was only a blank sheet of paper.\nIn 2022, we finally caught a glimpse of normal life. The price was overflowing pharmacies, hospitals, and funeral homes. On the afternoon of January 18, I walked into a somewhat unfamiliar entry-exit administration hall and saw it packed with people. Long lines stretched in front of the passport counters. People seemed ready to run toward the world. But who knows? Maybe before long, the open door will close again at just the right moment.\nFacing an absurd world, I have also thought about the purpose of life. Especially when land I had worked hard to cultivate would not bear fruit, and when the distant shore I had searched for so long would not appear through the clouds, I felt regret and sadness. But the world gives no answer. It is like the pendulum of a clock, swinging endlessly, repeating a purposeless return.\nLater I read Camus and learned that the world is absurd, and life has no purpose. Or rather, existence itself is the purpose. We do not need to rack our brains searching for the purpose of life, because a life with a fixed purpose is sad and runs against the absurdity of the world. All we can do is recognize the absurd and embrace the void.\nIn 2022, I embraced the void in my own way. The year before, I bought a small apartment in my third-tier hometown as one of the material conditions for marriage. The purchase landed exactly at the peak of both housing prices and mortgage rates. If I had to calculate profit and loss, I had already taken a loss of nearly 200,000 RMB within a year.\nFor a while, my state of mind was poor, especially when the very purpose of buying the apartment seemed to be moving away from me. Later, I finally recovered the essence of existentialism. I am Sisyphus, endlessly pushing the stone up the mountain, and my life is the stone that keeps rolling back down. I told myself: my apartment is not a means to achieve some other purpose. It is the purpose itself. It is a quiet space where I can be alone, an anchor while I sail at sea, and the foundation of all my spiritual freedom.\nYes, pursuing spiritual freedom, recognizing the absurdity of the world, and embracing the void of life were the greatest things 2022 gave me. In 2023, I will try not to cling to so-called purpose, not to obsess over the absurdity of the world, and instead live attentively and freely.\nFinally, at the last moment of the Year of Renyin, I wish all of you a way out of the low valley of the old year, and a life you truly want.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20230121/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn 2022, many things changed in our lives. For example, the sound of firecrackers, absent from cities for years, finally returned. The authorities kept issuing strict bans, but neither people\u0026rsquo;s long-repressed emotions nor an ancient tradition that has lasted for thousands of years on this land can simply be erased.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn 2022, we witnessed a low point of civilization. The great bell was cast aside while the clay pot rang; countless people suffered under the crushing weight of power. Fortunately, thunder still comes from silence, and the curve of civilizational decline still has temporary rebounds. Perhaps no one expected the fire in Urumqi to spread across the whole country. Between people and their long-lost courage, there was only a blank sheet of paper.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Freedom, Absurdity, and the Void"},{"content":"Opening If you often mess with your home network, you must often encounter these problems:\nWhy can’t I open the backend of the router even though the network cable is plugged in? Why does the NAS’s IP address often change? Why does the speed of opening web pages become slower when using expensive soft routing? Why can’t I play the bypass route even after following the boss’s video configuration? The above problems are actually related to DHCP.\nWhat is DHCP? DHCP is the abbreviation of Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol, which means Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol. Its function is to automatically assign an IP address to each device connected to the LAN and automatically configure the default gateway and DNS server for these devices.\nGlossary It’s okay if you don’t understand what gateways and DNS mean. You can think of gateway as a transfer station. All devices in the LAN must communicate with the outside world through this transfer station. However, there is usually only one gateway for home networks, which is the router. DNS is a little more complicated. I will make a separate video to explain it later. Here you just need to understand it as a \u0026ldquo;phone book\u0026rdquo;.\nHow DHCP works The DHCP protocol consists of a server and multiple clients. The server is generally your router, and the client is the device you use to access the Internet.\nDiscoer Whenever a new device connects to a LAN for the first time, it broadcasts its MAC address to the entire network. The so-called MAC address is the hardware address of each device. It is written on the device\u0026rsquo;s network card and cannot be changed under normal circumstances. It is equivalent to the \u0026ldquo;ID card number\u0026rdquo; of the device. When a new device connects for the first time, it broadcasts its MAC address to the LAN, which is equivalent to the new employee\u0026rsquo;s self-introduction. This self-introduction has a very foreign name, called Discover.\nOffer When the router receives the broadcast of a new device, it will select a vacant address among the existing IP addresses that has not been occupied by other devices, and package this address and other configuration information (such as default gateway and DNS) and send it to the device, which is equivalent to the leader assigning a workstation to a new employee. This arrangement also has a very foreign name, called Offer.\nRequest The next thing is very simple. When the device receives the configuration information sent by the router and decides to apply these configurations, it will reply to the router again, which is equivalent to accepting the arrangement of the leader. This reply also has a very foreign name, called Request.\nOne thing to note here is that if there are more than two routers in the LAN, and these routes have the DHCP service enabled, then after receiving the broadcast of the new device, they will send configuration information to the device at the same time. When the device receives multiple configuration information at the same time, it will reply to the one received first. Therefore, in order to avoid network chaos, even if you have multiple routers at home, it is best to only enable one DHCP service.\n###ACKBack to the topic, when the router receives a positive reply from the device, it will reply to the device to indicate that the space occupation is successful. At this time, the device will automatically configure its own network based on the IP address, default gateway and DNS server issued by the router to achieve successful networking. This reply from the router is called ACK.\nAnswer question 1 Having said that, we have solved the first problem mentioned at the beginning of the video:\nWhy can\u0026rsquo;t I open the backend of the router even though I have plugged in the network cable? There are two possibilities here: 1. Your router does not have the DHCP service enabled, and your computer does not receive the IP address issued by the router. 2. Your router has the DHCP service enabled, but your computer has been previously set with a static IP address, and this static address and the address of the router are not in the same network segment.\nTo solve the problem of \u0026ldquo;cannot open the background\u0026rdquo;, the method is also very simple: 1. If it is the first case, then we need to manually configure a static IP address on the computer first, and this address must be in the same network segment as the router. For example, if the IP address of the router is 192.168.31.1, then the static address of the computer must be set to 192.168.31.x. The x here can be any number from 2 to 255, but be careful not to overlap with other devices. 2. If it is the second case, then we need to clear the static IP address of the computer and change the IP address acquisition method to \u0026ldquo;obtain an IP address automatically\u0026rdquo;. In this way, our computer will accept the assignment of DHCP service again.\nNAK message Back to the topic again, the entire process mentioned above is the process for a new device to connect to the LAN for the first time. If it is not a new device that is connected for the first time, but an old device that has been connected before. If you disconnect and reconnect, you will skip the first two steps and start directly from Request. This is equivalent to an old employee returning after leaving the company, directly omitting the polite process and asking the leader to give you a workstation.\nAt this time, the router will check the previous DHCP lease table. If the device\u0026rsquo;s previously corresponding IP address is still vacant, an ACK will be returned as usual. The lease continues to be valid and the device continues to use its previous IP address. If the device\u0026rsquo;s previous corresponding IP address has been occupied by another device, the device\u0026rsquo;s request can only be rejected. Then this action of rejection is called NAK.\nAnswer question 2 Speaking of which, we have solved the second problem mentioned at the beginning of the video:\nWhy does the NAS\u0026rsquo;s IP address keep changing? The reason is that when the NAS is shut down and offline, the IP address originally occupied becomes vacant and occupied by other devices. When the NAS is turned back on and online, the router can only reassign it a new IP address. At this time, we will not be able to find the backend of the NAS, and we need to use software such as Synology finder to search for the new address of the NAS again.\nIt is also very simple to solve this problem, that is, turn on the IP/MAC binding of the router, assign a fixed IP address to a specific MAC address, and achieve \u0026ldquo;one carrot and one pit\u0026rdquo;, so that there will be no confusion.\nDHCP application ***Knowing how DHCP works, we can solve many problems during the Internet access process.\nAnswer question three Why does the speed of opening web pages become slower when using expensive soft routing? If the speed of opening web pages is very slow, or if QQ can connect to the Internet, but the web pages cannot be opened, it is probably because there is a problem with the DNS server. The DNS server of our home network is usually obtained from the operator through the optical modem, and then delivered layer by layer through the DHCP service of the router. If we do not specify a DNS server in the router\u0026rsquo;s DHCP service, the router will default to the operator\u0026rsquo;s DNS. As we all know, the operator\u0026rsquo;s DNS is often hijacked and is neither safe nor stable to use.\nTherefore, to solve the problem of \u0026ldquo;slow web browsing\u0026rdquo;, we can manually specify a stable DNS server address in the router\u0026rsquo;s DHCP service, so that all devices in the LAN can apply the DNS issued by the router\u0026rsquo;s DHCP. As for the useful public DNS servers, you can search a lot on the Internet. The more common ones include the famous Google 8.8.8.8 in foreign countries, and Alibaba 223.5.5.5 in China.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20220518/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"opening\"\u003eOpening\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003chr\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIf you often mess with your home network, you must often encounter these problems:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003col\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy can’t I open the backend of the router even though the network cable is plugged in?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy does the NAS’s IP address often \u003cstrong\u003echange\u003c/strong\u003e?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy does the speed of opening web pages become \u003cstrong\u003eslower\u003c/strong\u003e when using expensive soft routing?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003cli\u003eWhy can’t I play the \u003cstrong\u003ebypass route\u003c/strong\u003e even after following the boss’s video configuration?\u003c/li\u003e\n\u003c/ol\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe above problems are actually related to DHCP.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"How to configure DHCP on your router?"},{"content":"Background With the increasing popularity of smart homes, major Internet giants have entered the market one after another, resulting in more and more smart home platforms and brands, and the products of various platforms and brands cannot be interoperable. For example, you cannot use Mijia smart switches to control homekit smart lights unless your product supports dual platforms, but currently there are very few smart homes that support more than two platforms at the same time.\nHome Assistant (hereinafter referred to as HA) solves the problem of non-interoperability between smart home platforms. It is an open source smart home integration platform that can connect products from various common platforms and control them uniformly through various clients such as web pages and mobile app to achieve the true \u0026ldquo;Internet of Everything\u0026rdquo;. And the most important thing is that such a useful tool not only supports multiple operating systems such as Windows, MacOS, Linux, etc., it is also open source and free, and its extremely high scalability also provides a new research object for digital enthusiasts who love tossing.\nDeploy HA container via Docker As mentioned earlier, HA supports multiple operating systems, but if we plan to use it as a 7x24-hour standby smart home hub, the best choice is the Linux system, because it can run on low-power devices such as Raspberry Pi , ready to provide services to us at any time.\nWhen it comes to Linux, we have to mention Docker. It is a highly compatible container system that can adapt to almost all Linux environments and can be installed and used out of the box. Today, we will focus on deploying HA through Docker containers.\nMy this article introduces in detail Portainer , a very easy-to-use Docker management container. Since the system environment of each reader is different, all Docker container installations introduced in this blog will no longer be limited to Synology, QNAP or Unraid, but will be unified through Portainer.\nFor the installation of Portainer itself, you can refer to the article mentioned above, and I will not go into details here. To install HA, we first need to log in to the Portainer backend, then enter the local terminal interface, which is Local, and then click Containers on the left to enter the local container management interface. Click Add container to create a new container, fill in the Name as you like, and enter the image index homeassistant/home-assistant:latest officially provided by HA as Image. Always pull the image can be turned on, so that every time the container configuration is modified in the future, the latest image will be re-pulled from the server. Then click Volumes in Advanced container settings below, enter the directory mapping tab, click the map additional volume button to add a directory mapping, and select bind for the mapping method on the right. The directory in the container can only be written to /config, which is the directory where the HA configuration file is located. The directory on the host can be filled in according to your own needs. Continue to click Env in Advanced container settings, enter the environment variable tab, click the add environment variable button to add an environment variable, fill in TZ for the name on the left, and fill in Asia/Shanghai for the value on the right. This sets the default time zone (Time Zone) of HA to Asia/Shanghai. The remaining advanced settings are relatively simple. Set Network to host and Restart policy to Always. Finally, click Deploy the container and wait for a while. If the network connection is smooth, the deployment of the HA container can be completed.\nThe default backend port of HA is 8123, so as long as we access the ip address: 8123 of the HA running device in the LAN, we can log in to the HA web page. When opening the HA web page for the first time, you need to perform some basic initialization configuration, such as user name and password, which will not be described here. It should be noted that the password of the HA administrator account cannot be retrieved. If we forget the password set here, we can only solve it by reinstalling the container.\nInstall HACS integration The full name of HACS is Home Assistant Community Store, which is a HA community store that provides various appearance themes and third-party integrated downloads. It is very easy to use and is recommended for all HA users to install. To install HACS, you first need to put its installation package into the HA container. Create two new directories in the /config directory mapped by HA, named www and custom components respectively. Click here to download the HACS installation package. Unzip the hacs directory in the compressed package to the personal components directory just created, and then restart the HA container. Log in to the HA web page, click Configuration - Devices and Services - Integration in the lower left corner to enter the Integration tab. Click the Add Integration button in the lower right corner, search for HACS, click Install HACS Integration, and then follow the prompts to install it smoothly. During the installation process, you need to log in to GitHub once. If you do not have an account, you need to register one. In addition, the installation process requires a scientific network environment, which can only be solved by yourself. After the installation is complete, restart the HA container again. If nothing else, there will be an additional HACS button on the left side of the web page. Click it to enter the HACS store interface.\nConnect Mijia to HA In the past, to connect Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s many smart homes to HA, we had to install a third-party HA integration, namely Hass-Xiaomi-Miot . It is released on GitHub by an individual developer al-one and has always been our only choice to connect Mijia to HA. Until December 2024, Xiaomi released the official HA integration on GitHub: HA_Xiaomi_Home , filling the gap of Mijia access to HA.\nAlthough this is another story of \u0026ldquo;officials forcing a fan to death\u0026rdquo;, Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s open source spirit is still worthy of praise. Compared with third-party integration, Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s official integration has better support for its own products and can help us connect Mijia to HA more easily, thereby realizing the interconnection between Mijia and the Homekit ecosystem. For details on how to install and use Xiaomi\u0026rsquo;s official integration, please see my latest article , which will not be updated here.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20220409/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"background\"\u003eBackground\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the increasing popularity of smart homes, major Internet giants have entered the market one after another, resulting in more and more smart home platforms and brands, and the products of various platforms and brands cannot be interoperable. For example, you cannot use Mijia smart switches to control homekit smart lights unless your product supports dual platforms, but currently there are very few smart homes that support more than two platforms at the same time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Building a Smart Home Hub with Home Assistant"},{"content":"Perhaps there is no such thing as an unbreakable tradition. Five years ago, Lunar New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve in my hometown still passed in the nonstop sound of firecrackers that lasted until dawn. Under the government\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;strong encouragement,\u0026rdquo; however, this ancient tradition, carried on for more than a thousand years, disappeared in just a few short years. And now, on this silent New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve, I sit alone remembering 2021, still holding on to the usual ritual feeling of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new.\nOver the past year, the world and I both lived in the aftershock of Covid. We gradually gave up the fantasy of \u0026ldquo;defeating\u0026rdquo; the virus and began thinking instead about how to coexist with it. In mid-April , I ended my drifting law-firm internship across Shenzhen, Chongqing, and Nanjing, then enjoyed a month of idle time while suffering through acute otitis media. The June graduation season passed with the wind. I then moved again, this time to Hangzhou, and officially began life as a corporate worker.\nAs a so-called new first-tier city that tries to measure itself against Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen in every way, Hangzhou has long since lost its old medieval charm. It has become a gathering place for nouveau riche ambition, searching for direction amid aggressive infrastructure development and the smoky fever of the internet industry. In this strange gold-rush atmosphere, even so-called central state-owned enterprises have had to start preaching \u0026ldquo;entrepreneurship.\u0026rdquo;\nI have never liked this mood, because behind every scene that appears vigorous and thriving lies the extreme exploitation of individual bodies and minds. Besides, beneath the tall buildings, the foundation of decline has already been laid. For people born in the 1990s like me, who have briefly tasted openness and freedom, the decline of civilization is visible to the naked eye. Along with that decline comes deep discomfort and pessimism.\nFortunately, even in a broader downturn, individuals can still move against the current. In 2021, with my parents\u0026rsquo; help, I finally bought my first apartment, and I worked hard to pay for the renovation with my own income. In the near future, I will also marry Ms. Zhang and try to shoulder the responsibilities of a family.\nPerhaps this is the last stubborn hope of someone supposedly \u0026ldquo;born proud\u0026rdquo; in a generally shabby age: to earn money cleanly, and to make people believe that earning money cleanly is possible. Though the person who first said something like this has now become one of the top livestream sellers on Douyin.\nI have always believed that for human beings, suffering is a required course and happiness is an elective. That is why I often lack sympathy for the accidents of life that befall others, because in a broad sense, everyone is barely surviving inside uncertainty. But I also believe that people can, through effort, eliminate much of the suffering that lies beyond mere fate: by solidarity and individual effort, by removing institutional evil, by leaving violence and privilege nowhere to hide, and by creating limited fairness in an uncertain world.\nAt the beginning of the Year of Renyin, winter has indeed passed, and the spring wind is indeed about to blow. Although 2021 brought turning points, please do not forget the suffering still taking place on this land. Do not forget the evils and injustices that once made us angry, resentful, and sick.\nI am still myself, still living with a sense of right and wrong, common sense, and reverence. It is only that, under omnipresent pressure from power, loud appeals have turned into irony and veiled sarcasm. May the world still be saved as long as the faint glow has not gone out.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20220201/","summary":"\u003cp\u003ePerhaps there is no such thing as an unbreakable tradition. Five years ago, Lunar New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve in my hometown still passed in the nonstop sound of firecrackers that lasted until dawn. Under the government\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;strong encouragement,\u0026rdquo; however, this ancient tradition, carried on for more than a thousand years, disappeared in just a few short years. And now, on this silent New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve, I sit alone remembering 2021, still holding on to the usual ritual feeling of saying goodbye to the old and welcoming the new.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Living with Suffering, Living Alongside Hope"},{"content":"Principle and environment detection With the continuous iteration of versions, Jellyfin has gradually surpassed Plex and its brother Emby to become the personal media management solution with the largest number of users. This is not only because all its functions are free, but also because its source code is completely open source and has extremely high room for maintenance and expansion.\nRegardless of the specific operating system used to run Jellyfin, as long as the system is based on Linux, we can achieve extremely simple and consistent deployment through Docker containers. But compared with the native package, Docker has an obvious shortcoming, that is, it cannot directly call various system resources, and the integrated GPU driver is one of them.\nIn order for Jellyfin\u0026rsquo;s Docker container to call the integrated GPU driver in real time (which is often called turning on the hardware decoding), two conditions must be met:\nHave a integrated GPU that supports video decoding, and the driver of the integrated GPU is running normally; Pass-through the integrated GPU driver to the Docker container and grant the Docker container the permission to call the driver. Whether the system meets the first condition above can be checked in the following way: first use the ssh tool to connect to the server, ensure that the account logged in to ssh has system management rights, and then enter the following command:\nls /dev/dri If the returned result is card0 renderD128, then congratulations, the integrated GPU driver is running normally and the hardware system meets the basic conditions for video decoding. The next step is to pass renderD128, the integrated graphics driver, directly to the Docker container.\nWhy must I use Portainer? Whether it is Synology, QNAP or Unraid , most NAS systems on the market provide graphical Docker container management tools. But no matter which one of the above, it does not support the pass-through function of the integrated GPU driver. Synology\u0026rsquo;s Docker suite cannot edit the system resource parameters of the container, and QNAP\u0026rsquo;s Container Station simply cannot edit the created container.\nThe \u0026ldquo;pass-through\u0026rdquo; mentioned here actually maps the driver file /dev/dri/renderD128 to the same location of the Docker container. This can be achieved very easily using the command line, by adding the following parameters to the pull command of the Jellyfin container:\n--device=/dev/dri/renderD128 \\ Therefore, to quickly pull and create a Jellyfin container with hardware decoding enabled, just enter the following command in the command line interface of the NAS:\nsudo docker run -d --name jellyfin \\ -v /share/Container/Jellyfin/config:/config \\ # directory for config files on the host -v /share/Container/Jellyfin/cache:/cache \\ # directory for media cache on the host -v /share/Media/:/media \\ # directory for movie files on the host -p 8096:8096 \\ # web UI access port (HTTP) -p 8920:8920 \\ # web UI access port (HTTPS) --device=/dev/dri/renderD128 \\ # map the integrated GPU driver --restart=always \\ # restart policy jellyfin/jellyfin However, for many light users, the command line is not only inconvenient to understand, but also cuts off the space for subsequent modification and customization of the container. Therefore, for the vast majority of daily users, I personally strongly recommend using Portainer . It itself is also a program running in a Docker container, but it has powerful Docker management functions and is currently the most complete web-based Docker container management interface on the market.\nTherefore, for those users who do not want to use the command line but also want to have more comprehensive control over Docker, Portainer is almost the only choice. With Portainer, even beginners can easily enable hardware decoding for Jellyfin.\nInstallation and use of Portainer Since Portainer needs to call the /var/run/docker.sock file to achieve direct management of Docker, Portainer cannot be installed through the Docker management interface provided by QNAP or QNAP, because the above management interfaces do not support mapping of a single file. However, since Portainer requires fewer parameters to be configured and frequent modifications are not required after the container is created, ordinary users can directly copy the following command for installation.\nsudo docker run -d --name portainer \\ -v /var/run/docker.sock:/var/run/docker.sock \\ # key setting -p 9000:9000 \\ # web UI access port --restart=always \\ # restart policy portainer/portainer After the container is created, you can access Portainer\u0026rsquo;s management interface through IP:port. Portainer\u0026rsquo;s default access port is 9000. The first time you log in, you need to set up an administrator account and password. Because it is used on a single machine, select \u0026ldquo;local\u0026rdquo; as the connection mode, and then click \u0026ldquo;Connect\u0026rdquo; to connect to docker on the server. After the configuration is completed, click local again and select Container on the left to use Portainer to manage all existing Docker containers on the system. Install Jellyfin and pass through the integrated GPU driver (enable hard decoding) Subsequent installation and configuration processes will be completed on the Portainer interface. First click the \u0026ldquo;Add container\u0026rdquo; button on the \u0026ldquo;Containers\u0026rdquo; tab to add a new container and enter the container creation interface. Just write \u0026ldquo;Name\u0026rdquo; casually, and fill in \u0026ldquo;Image\u0026rdquo; with Jellyfin\u0026rsquo;s official Docker Hub image path jellyfin/jellyfin. \u0026ldquo;Always pull the image\u0026rdquo; can be turned on, so that when we complete the configuration and create the container, Portainer will automatically pull the latest official image from Docker Hub. Select \u0026ldquo;Manual network port publishing\u0026rdquo; under \u0026ldquo;Network ports configuration\u0026rdquo; and click \u0026ldquo;publish a new network port\u0026rdquo; to create two port mappings, 8096 and 8920, as access ports for the Jellyfin web interface. Then click the \u0026ldquo;volumes\u0026rdquo; tab to map the directories within the container. The default directories that Jellyfin needs to map are /media, /cache and /config. Click the \u0026ldquo;bind\u0026rdquo; button to select the corresponding directory on the server for mapping. Select \u0026ldquo;host\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;Network\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;always\u0026rdquo; for \u0026ldquo;Restart policy\u0026rdquo;. The most important thing is that you must click \u0026ldquo;add device\u0026rdquo; in \u0026ldquo;Runtime \u0026amp; Resources\u0026rdquo; and enter /dev/dri/renderD128 on both sides. This is a key step to enable hard decoding. After the above configuration is completed, you can click the \u0026ldquo;Deploy the container\u0026rdquo; button to create the container. If the network environment is good, wait for about half a minute to complete the creation of the container. At this point, we have not only manually configured the Docker container of jellyfin, but also passed the driver file of the integrated GPU directly to the container. Finally, as long as you enter the Jellyfin console, in the \u0026ldquo;Playback\u0026rdquo; tab, select the \u0026ldquo;Hardware Acceleration\u0026rdquo; type as \u0026ldquo;Video Acceleration API (VAAPI)\u0026rdquo;, and fill in /dev/dri/renderD128 in the \u0026ldquo;VA API Device\u0026rdquo;, you can call the server\u0026rsquo;s integrated GPU driver for hardware decoding. ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210909/","summary":"\u003ch2 id=\"principle-and-environment-detection\"\u003ePrinciple and environment detection\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWith the continuous iteration of versions, \u003ca href=\"https://jellyfin.org\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eJellyfin\u003c/a\u003e\n has gradually surpassed \u003ca href=\"https://www.plex.tv\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePlex\u003c/a\u003e\n and its brother \u003ca href=\"https://emby.media\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eEmby\u003c/a\u003e\n to become the personal media management solution with the largest number of users. This is not only because all its functions are free, but also because its source code is completely open source and has extremely high room for maintenance and expansion.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eRegardless of the specific operating system used to run Jellyfin, as long as the system is based on Linux, we can achieve extremely simple and consistent deployment through Docker containers. \u003cstrong\u003eBut compared with the native package, Docker has an obvious shortcoming, that is, it cannot directly call various system resources\u003c/strong\u003e, and the integrated GPU driver is one of them.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Using Portainer to Enable Jellyfin Hardware Decoding in Docker"},{"content":"When using Hugo to generate a static site, we often run into small problems that are not fatal but still annoying. One example is not having a custom site icon. If we simply follow the default configuration of a theme, the generated site usually has no icon, or it uses the theme\u0026rsquo;s built-in icon. That obviously cannot satisfy my strong DIY impulse.\nReaders who visit this blog often may have noticed that the Hugo theme I use is a third-party theme that supports automatic switching between light and dark mode: AutoFuji . While reading its documentation today, I discovered that it supports Favicon code. After a few simple steps, my blog finally had its own icon.\nAdding Favicon code to a Hugo site is very simple. First, visit this website and upload an image as the source for your site icon. There are many similar favicon generators, and you can choose whichever you prefer. Their basic functions are more or less the same.\nAfter the image is uploaded, the site will automatically move to a configuration page. If you do not have special requirements, the default settings are fine. Click the generate button at the bottom of the page to generate the icons and code.\nAfter generation, click the button shown in the screenshot to download the icon package in different formats, and copy the automatically generated HTML code to your clipboard.\nNext, go to the root directory of your Hugo site and extract all files from the downloaded archive into the /static/ folder.\nOpen /layouts/partials/favicon.html with a text editor, clear the original code, paste in the code you just copied, save, and exit.\nFinally, open /themes/current-theme-name/layouts/partials/head.html. The exact file may vary by theme. For example, with the Fuji theme I used, I edited favicon.html in the same directory directly. Find the following line:\n\u0026lt;link rel=\u0026#34;shortcut icon\u0026#34; href=\u0026#34;xxx\u0026#34; /\u0026gt; Replace xxx with favicon.ico, then save and exit.\nAt this point, the favicon setup is complete. Regenerate the site with the hugo command, and if nothing unexpected happens, you should see the site icon you uploaded.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210527/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eWhen using \u003ca href=\"https://gohugo.io\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHugo\u003c/a\u003e\n to generate a static site, we often run into small problems that are not fatal but still annoying. One example is not having a custom site icon. If we simply follow the default configuration of a theme, the generated site usually has no icon, or it uses the theme\u0026rsquo;s built-in icon. That obviously cannot satisfy my strong DIY impulse.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eReaders who visit this blog often may have noticed that the Hugo theme I use is a third-party theme that supports automatic switching between light and dark mode: \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/dsrkafuu/hugo-theme-fuji\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eAutoFuji\u003c/a\u003e\n. While reading its documentation today, I discovered that it supports \u003ca href=\"https://baike.baidu.com/item/favicon\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eFavicon\u003c/a\u003e\n code. After a few simple steps, my blog finally had its own icon.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Adding a Favicon to a Hugo Static Site"},{"content":"After an optical modem is switched to bridge mode, the OpenWrt router becomes the default gateway and handles dialing and NAT. As a result, client devices cannot obtain IP addresses on the same subnet as the modem, and therefore cannot log in to the modem\u0026rsquo;s admin page.\nIn everyday use, modem configuration is almost a one-time thing, so the admin page is rarely needed. Still, it is annoying to connect a device directly to the modem by cable or Wi-Fi every time you want to log in. With a few simple settings, you can access the modem admin page at any time while still connected to the OpenWrt router.\nThe principle is simple: while the existing DHCP server continues working normally, assign the router\u0026rsquo;s WAN port another IP address on the same subnet as the optical modem. This assumes your router supports multiple WAN interfaces.\nUsing OpenWrt as an example, go to Network -\u0026gt; Interfaces and click Add new interface.\nThe interface name can be anything. Set the protocol to Static address, and choose the physical interface currently bound to the WAN port. Do not choose DHCP if possible, because a modem in bridge mode usually disables its own DHCP function and will not automatically assign an IP address to the new interface. You need to use Static address and manually specify the new interface\u0026rsquo;s IP address.\nAfter these settings, click Submit to enter the detailed configuration page.\nThe IPv4 address must be on the same subnet as the modem. For example, if the modem\u0026rsquo;s LAN address, which is also the modem admin address, is 192.168.1.1, then the static IP address of the new interface should be 192.168.1.x. Set the subnet mask to 255.255.255.0, and set the default gateway to the modem\u0026rsquo;s LAN IP address. For background on IP subnets and subnet masks, you can refer to this article .\nAfter finishing the settings, click Save \u0026amp; Apply.\nAfter the new interface is configured, DNS cache delay may temporarily prevent normal browsing. Restarting the router should fix it. If you previously configured port forwarding, all port forwarding rules will stop working after the new interface is created. Additional firewall settings are needed to restore them.\nGo back to the detailed settings page for the new interface. Under Firewall Settings, bind the original WAN firewall zone to the new interface.\nThen go to Network -\u0026gt; Firewall -\u0026gt; Port Forwards, and simply save and apply the existing port forwarding rules again.\nThat should be it. If nothing goes wrong, you can now access the optical modem admin page at any time while the modem remains in bridge mode.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210505/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAfter an optical modem is switched to bridge mode, the OpenWrt router becomes the default gateway and handles dialing and NAT. As a result, client devices cannot obtain IP addresses on the same subnet as the modem, and therefore cannot log in to the modem\u0026rsquo;s admin page.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn everyday use, modem configuration is almost a one-time thing, so the admin page is rarely needed. Still, it is annoying to connect a device directly to the modem by cable or Wi-Fi every time you want to log in. With a few simple settings, you can access the modem admin page at any time while still connected to the OpenWrt router.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Accessing the Optical Modem Admin Page from an OpenWrt Router in Bridge Mode"},{"content":"Recently, I finally gave up the buy-out game model on platforms such as Steam or Epic Games, and switched to a subscription model like Xbox Game Pass (XGP) . Although the buyout system can greatly satisfy the \u0026ldquo;like plus one\u0026rdquo; style of collecting, since I started my internship, it has been difficult for me to spare a whole block of time to clear various stand-alone games. As a result, my game library contains a large number of purchased but unfinished games. This not only reduces my desire to buy and try the latest games, but also causes a huge waste of funds. I don’t know since when, playing games has become a “task” to be completed, and the original intention of relaxing after work has been lost.\nTherefore, I struggled for a long time and finally decided not to buy any stand-alone games in the future. If I am not so busy for a certain period of time (for example, I quit my job and am at home now), I will subscribe to XGP for one month and experience the latest stand-alone games. In fact, Xbox accounts can switch regions at any time. Therefore, we can simply switch the system region of Win10 to Hong Kong to enjoy the preferential price of Hong Kong XGP of HK$79 per month (HK$10 for the first month). At a time when a single-player game can easily cost more than 300 yuan, XGP is indeed a very cost-effective solution. After all, one month is enough for me to finish a medium-sized stand-alone game, and the price of buying this game is far more than 79 Hong Kong dollars. After activating XGP, I started thinking about how to use my \u0026ldquo;fragmented time\u0026rdquo; to play games while traveling on business. For example, after getting off work every day during my stay, I only had a MacBook with weak performance when I stayed in the hotel. How can I use the existing equipment to play stand-alone games on XGP in the hotel? In fact, there is only one solution: remote desktop. As long as I turn on the wake-on-LAN function on my PC at home and set a certain remote desktop software to start automatically at boot, I can play games on my home computer anytime, anywhere through wake-on-LAN + remote control.\nAlthough the idea is very simple, it really took me a lot of effort to find suitable remote desktop software. After careful searching, I found a remote desktop software called Parsec . It not only supports both Windows and macOS dual platforms, but is also optimized for remote gaming. Not only that, Parsec also supports Hevc encoding . As long as the client device supports Hevc decoding, it can greatly reduce the volume of streaming data, reduce the consumption of network bandwidth and traffic, and improve the remote gaming experience.\nThe use of Parsec is very simple. Just go to the official website to register an account and download and install the Parsec client on the server (device used to run the game) and client (device used for remote control). After installing and logging in to the software on both devices at the same time, the software interface should look like this: At this point, just click the Connect button on the corresponding device to establish a remote connection. But in order to improve our gaming experience, some simple settings need to be made before official use. Click the gear icon on the left to enter the settings interface, and turn on the \u0026ldquo;Hardware Decoding\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Hevc Encoding\u0026rdquo; functions of the client device. After the connection is successful, the software will automatically mute the controlled device and transfer all system sounds to the controlled device for playback. This detail is very user-friendly. After testing, in a local area network (gigabit bandwidth) environment, the two devices can basically achieve zero-latency remote control. However, in a wide area network environment, due to bandwidth and delay limitations, the remote control is slightly delayed and stuck, but it can still satisfy some games that do not have such high operational requirements. For example, I am currently completing \u0026ldquo;Walker on the Wrong Road\u0026rdquo;. This is a \u0026ldquo;HD Mosaic\u0026rdquo; game, and all battles are turn-based, making it ideal for remote play. Since macOS natively supports the Xbox and Switch Pro controllers, and Parsec can also directly recognize all the buttons of the above two controllers, during remote gaming, you can directly control the server-side game by connecting the controller to the client device. When the network condition is good, the experience of remote gaming is almost the same as that of local gaming. ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210502/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently, I finally gave up the buy-out game model on platforms such as Steam or Epic Games, and switched to a subscription model like \u003ca href=\"https://www.xbox.com/zh-HK/xbox-game-pass\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eXbox Game Pass (XGP)\u003c/a\u003e\n. Although the buyout system can greatly satisfy the \u0026ldquo;like plus one\u0026rdquo; style of collecting, since I started my internship, it has been difficult for me to spare a whole block of time to clear various stand-alone games. As a result, my game library contains a large number of purchased but unfinished games. This not only reduces my desire to buy and try the latest games, but also causes a huge waste of funds. I don’t know since when, playing games has become a “task” to be completed, and the original intention of relaxing after work has been lost.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Remote Game Streaming with Parsec"},{"content":"This is Mason\u0026rsquo;s Blog , a personal site built with Hugo. I use it to keep notes on things I learn, along with occasional complaints, digressions, and fragments of personal experience.\nGitHub repository | Blog | Mirror About the Author I am Mason, a Master of Laws graduate and an investment and financing lawyer. I was born in the 1990s, am trying to make a living for myself and my family, and still carry a small amount of idealism.\nI love history and literature, and I have long had an interest in IT. In my spare time, I once helped produce East Asia Observatory , mostly for the joy of finding striking ending songs. I now run a modest personal podcast, 议正言辞 , and the Bilibili channel MasonTV .\nEmail: me@masonhu.xyz About the Blog This blog is a place for scattered notes, occasional grumbling, and loose personal writing. It is not built for reach or influence. It is closer to a long-running hollow in a tree where I store experience and thoughts. Topics are mixed, including but not limited to:\ntechnology tools and personal projects; current affairs and social observations; personal life and journals; history, law, and reading notes. The blog was created during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. Posts dated before January 1, 2020 were written before the blog existed and are personal historical pieces. Because of my age and limited perspective at the time, those older posts are not always very readable, and some attitudes or views in them are no longer ones I hold or accept. This blog does not accept tips or sponsorship for posts, and I do not particularly hope it will be recommended to more people. If you happen to arrive here, quiet reading is more than enough.\nRepository Structure content/post/: blog posts content/about.md: about page static/images/: image assets layouts/: site-level layout overrides assets/css/extended/: site-level CSS extensions Automatic Deployment After changes are pushed to the main branch, .github/workflows/hugo.yml automatically:\nInstalls the specified Hugo version. Fetches the latest PaperMod theme through Hugo Modules. Builds the static site. Uploads the Pages artifact. Deploys to GitHub Pages / Cloudflare Pages. Copyright Unless otherwise stated in a post, all written content on this blog is original and may not be reproduced, excerpted, or used commercially without permission.\nThe theme code in this repository follows the license of its upstream project. Blog posts, images, and personal materials are not automatically licensed for reuse simply because this repository is public.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/about/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis is \u003ca href=\"https://masonblog.github.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eMason\u0026rsquo;s Blog\u003c/a\u003e\n, a personal site built with Hugo. I use it to keep notes on things I learn, along with occasional complaints, digressions, and fragments of personal experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003ca href=\"https://github.com/masonblog/masonblog.github.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eGitHub repository\u003c/a\u003e\n | \u003ca href=\"https://masonblog.github.io/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eBlog\u003c/a\u003e\n | \u003ca href=\"https://blog.masonhu.xyz/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eMirror\u003c/a\u003e\n\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003ch2 id=\"about-the-author\"\u003eAbout the Author\u003c/h2\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI am Mason, a Master of Laws graduate and an investment and financing lawyer. I was born in the 1990s, am trying to make a living for myself and my family, and still carry a small amount of idealism.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"About Me and This Blog"},{"content":"During last year\u0026rsquo;s pandemic, I was bored at home and started tinkering with soft routers and DIY NAS devices. The system I played with the most was Xpenology, the unofficial Synology setup.\nFor that purpose, I bought two Snail Star machines, a B Dual and a C. The B Dual became a soft router, while the C was used for Xpenology. A year later, work has left me with little time to tinker, and for data safety and convenience I bought a QNAP NAS earlier this year. As the saying goes, after enough Xpenology tinkering, you eventually move to real Synology. But QNAP is simply much better value for money, so I shamelessly defected.\nYesterday, on a whim, I wanted to flash the Snail Star B Dual that had been gathering dust in the corner into an Xpenology machine, to use as cold backup storage for important data. It would stay powered off most of the time and only be turned on for backup. Since my B Dual had always been used as a soft router, I had never installed Xpenology on it. But because Snail Star machines have similar hardware, I naively assumed that the existing Xpenology boot USB from the C machine would work directly.\nOf course, I ran into trouble.\nDuring the new system installation, the progress would always reach 56% and then throw error 13: \u0026ldquo;System installation failed. The file may be corrupted (13).\u0026rdquo; To solve it, I tried many methods, including formatting all drives, including the SSD, and switching between different official and unofficial DSM installation packages. None of them worked. Error 13 remained.\nIn the end, with advice from someone in a Telegram group, I finally solved it. The cause was simple: the motherboard BIOS settings were wrong. Connect a keyboard and monitor, enter the BIOS during boot, usually by pressing DEL when the motherboard logo appears, then go to Advanced -\u0026gt; Miscellaneous Configuration -\u0026gt; OS Selection and change Win 7 to Win 8.x.\nAfter half a day of work, the solution turned out to be this simple. I am recording it here so later beginners do not waste time the way I did. This is not really much of a tutorial, just a note.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210423/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eDuring last year\u0026rsquo;s pandemic, I was bored at home and started tinkering with soft routers and DIY NAS devices. The system I played with the most was Xpenology, the unofficial \u003ca href=\"https://www.synology.com/en-us/dsm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSynology\u003c/a\u003e\n setup.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFor that purpose, I bought two Snail Star machines, a B Dual and a C. The B Dual became a soft router, while the C was used for Xpenology. A year later, work has left me with little time to tinker, and for data safety and convenience I bought a QNAP NAS earlier this year. As the saying goes, after enough Xpenology tinkering, you eventually move to real Synology. But QNAP is simply much better value for money, so I shamelessly defected.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Fixing the Xpenology 'File May Be Corrupted (13)' Error on a Snail Star B Dual"},{"content":"Cause I don’t know what kind of mood I am writing this travel note at this time, because it is not originally a travel note - how can returning to my hometown be considered a trip? But when I finally stood in the east square of Wuhu Station at one o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning, I realized clearly: I was finally home.\nIt all started a week ago. On a gloomy afternoon, I was walking alone on the bamboo-shaded road of the Chengdu Giant Panda Base, thinking aimlessly - about work, about marriage, and even about some insignificant things. Giant pandas are not that attractive to me. After all, they are all similar-looking creatures. I will get bored after looking at them for a while and taking a few photos. So this is a great time to fill your brain with whatever it is.\nThe result of this thinking was the decision to resign. Although in terms of career development prospects alone, the current job is very good. But its low starting salary and the nature of long-term business trips forced me to face the issue of \u0026ldquo;work-family balance\u0026rdquo;. If I choose to return to a provincial capital city near my hometown, there will be a job waiting for me with a higher starting salary and no need to travel. So after a fierce ideological struggle, I came to the conclusion: The so-called \u0026ldquo;development prospects\u0026rdquo; are all relative. Even if I return to my hometown, it does not mean that there are no development prospects at all. But compared with life itself, the \u0026ldquo;prospects\u0026rdquo; of the current job are not worth my continued pursuit. If the ultimate goal of working hard to make money is to live a better life, then when you have absolutely no other choice, you should not give up life itself for the sake of making money. This is putting the cart before the horse.\nTherefore, I decided to return to Shenzhen from Chongqing on April 15. After completing the final work handover procedures, I flew back to my hometown of Anhui via Zhuhai. As for the reason for passing through Zhuhai, it is entirely because the final return ticket cannot be reimbursed. In order to save money, I purchased the relatively cheap flight from Zhuhai to Hefei. Most of the time before (when the company reimbursed the air tickets), I flew directly from Shenzhen to Nanjing, and the latter was the fastest route.\nstart Just do it. The habit of \u0026ldquo;minimalist living\u0026rdquo; that I have developed in my daily life is showing its power at this time - all the personal belongings I have in my two residences in Chongqing and Shenzhen are only the size of a 20-inch suitcase and a backpack. Therefore, I was able to clear two residences and return to my hometown over a distance of more than 3,000 kilometers in just one and a half days.\nAfter completing the necessary procedures, it was already ten o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning. I walked out of the company building with my bag on my back and took a taxi back to my apartment. Before getting in the car, I took what might be the last photo of the company building behind me. Our apartment is a four-room dormitory provided free of charge by the company for interns. It is about half an hour\u0026rsquo;s drive from the company (it takes one hour to get there by bus). After arriving at the apartment, I quickly went upstairs to take off my suitcase and went through the deposit refund procedure at the front desk (I paid a 100 yuan deposit when I checked into the dormitory). Then walk to the nearby subway station, change once, and arrive at the \u0026ldquo;Shekou Port\u0026rdquo; station. After leaving the station, we walked for about 20 minutes and finally arrived at the first stop of our trip back home - Shekou Cruise Center. This is a terminal with unique interior and exterior decoration. The internal structure is very similar to a high-speed rail station or an airport: the first floor is the entrance, and the second floor and above are dining or rest areas. The way to get tickets is also very simple. Just put the ID card corresponding to the ID number registered when purchasing the ticket on the self-service machine near the entrance. The flight I took was the passenger ship Xunlong from Shekou Port to Hengqin Port. There are two types of positions: ordinary and first-class, and the price difference is only thirty yuan. First class not only has fewer passengers, but the seats are more comfortable and the view is better. After boarding the ship, I found a very interesting sign with the words \u0026ldquo;China Merchants Group, founded in 1872\u0026rdquo;, which instantly gave me the feeling of dreaming back to the Qing Dynasty. The voyage passed the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge and the Macau Friendship Bridge, and passed through the narrow channel between Zhuhai and Macau. During this period, the mobile phone signal drifted to Macau, and I also received a warning text message from the customs. Although just a few minutes were not enough to turn my itinerary code into red, this short \u0026ldquo;exit\u0026rdquo; still made me full of emotions. After more than an hour of sailing, the passenger ship docked steadily at Hengqin Port, Zhuhai. I have heard people talk about Zhuhai’s beautiful environment and pure air a long time ago, and this time I finally felt it myself. twists and turns But just as I walked out of the beautiful Hengqin Pier in a happy mood, I received a text message that the flight was delayed for three hours. In January of this year, news of HNA’s bankruptcy and reorganization officially came out. At that time, I had the emotion of “watching him build a tall building, watching his building collapse.” But when the flight was delayed by three hours, and the airline happened to be Hainan Airlines, I felt again at a loss as when \u0026ldquo;the dust of the times falls on one\u0026rsquo;s head\u0026rdquo;. Since time suddenly became extremely abundant, I slowed down my pace and took a bus to the airport bus station while enjoying the scenery along the way in Zhuhai. The nearest airport bus station to Hengqin Port is at Holiday Inn Hengqin. This is a hotel decorated to look like a fairy tale castle. Although I have not stayed in this hotel, the external environment alone feels very suitable for staying on vacation. After waiting on the first floor of the hotel for nearly forty minutes, the airport bus finally arrived. On the way to the airport, the bus will stop briefly at the University of Macau Hengqin Campus. This university is across the sea from Macau. Although it is located in Zhuhai, it is administratively under the jurisdiction of Macau. No matter from any aspect, this can be regarded as a model of \u0026ldquo;one country, two systems\u0026rdquo;. So during the second half of the journey to the airport, I walked with a group of students from the University of Macau. Although these people are still students, they have already fallen into the bad social habit of \u0026ldquo;watching videos outside on the bus.\u0026rdquo;\nAfter arriving at Zhuhai Jinwan Airport, I waited for more than two hours in KFC and the terminal with nothing to do. During the broadcast, a slightly apologetic statement was made that dinner would be provided to all HNA passengers who had been delayed. But when I saw the middle-aged man sitting next to me in the terminal returning angrily with a box of hot lunch boxes, I gave up on this \u0026ldquo;free dinner.\u0026rdquo; In comparison, the \u0026ldquo;Hainan Special Chicken Noodles\u0026rdquo; on the plane attracted me more.\nAt 7:30 in the evening, the radio finally informed us that we were ready to board the plane. So I picked up my suitcase again and stood in a long queue, waiting to board the flight that was supposed to take off three hours ago.\n#End\nExcept for Shanghai Hongqiao Airport, almost all the airports in the cities I have visited are located in remote suburbs. This may be in line with certain economic principles, but it actually goes against the convenience of passengers. Perhaps because of the consideration of convenience, Hefei Xinqiao Airport has set up a special city shuttle bus to regularly transport passengers to the train station and other city addresses. After the plane landed slowly at 9:30 pm, I followed the crowd and hurried to the city shuttle boarding point outside the arrivals hall of the airport. I spent fifteen yuan to buy a ticket to Hefei Railway Station. The shuttle bus didn\u0026rsquo;t leave \u0026ldquo;on time\u0026rdquo; until ten o\u0026rsquo;clock, and it didn\u0026rsquo;t arrive until 11:08, which was still more than 200 meters away from Hefei Railway Station.\nYes, you heard it right. The shuttle bus destined for Hefei Railway Station did not actually enter Hefei Railway Station, but dropped us off far away from the train station. The last train that night departed at 11:21, which meant that within thirteen minutes, I had to drag my suitcase and backpack over a distance of more than 200 meters, go through the security check, go upstairs, find the correct platform and squeeze into the train. Although the above process was very difficult and tiring, I managed to get on the train just one second before the train door closed.\nSince it was too late, I could only take the green car home. So I stayed for another hour and a half in the foul-smelling green van. Finally, I finally returned to Wuhu at one o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210416/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"cause\"\u003eCause\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI don’t know what kind of mood I am writing this travel note at this time, because it is not originally a travel note - how can returning to my hometown be considered a trip? But when I finally stood in the east square of Wuhu Station at one o\u0026rsquo;clock in the morning, I realized clearly: I was finally home.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIt all started a week ago. On a gloomy afternoon, I was walking alone on the bamboo-shaded road of the Chengdu Giant Panda Base, thinking aimlessly - about work, about marriage, and even about some insignificant things. Giant pandas are not that attractive to me. After all, they are all similar-looking creatures. I will get bored after looking at them for a while and taking a few photos. So this is a great time to fill your brain with whatever it is.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Farewell, for a new beginning: remembering a circuitous trip back home"},{"content":"Most OpenWrt soft-router systems we use day to day include the LuCI interface . It provides a convenient visual admin page, and thanks to contributions from many developers, it also supports plenty of easy-to-use graphical apps. luci-app-OpenVPN-server is one of the more common VPN server apps for LuCI.\nIn simple terms, luci-app-OpenVPN-server is a LuCI interface for the OpenVPN server. With it, you can avoid the troublesome command line and configure your OpenVPN server directly through a web UI. Combined with OpenVPN client apps on major platforms, you can connect to your home LAN from anywhere for internal access or file transfer.\nNormally, if you fill in the configuration information as prompted in LuCI, the OpenVPN server can run successfully. Then you click the one-click .ovpn download button, import the downloaded config file into an OpenVPN client, and start using it.\nHowever, the default configuration of luci-app-OpenVPN-server only allows one client to log in at a time. When a second client connects, the first one is forced offline. In everyday use, multiple devices connecting at the same time is very common. So how can we make luci-app-OpenVPN-server support multiple simultaneous devices?\nThe OpenVPN server itself does support multiple device connections. According to this GitHub issue , all we need to do is add one line to the OpenVPN configuration file.\nFirst, log in to your OpenWrt router via SSH. You can search for the specific tools and methods yourself. I usually use Microsoft\u0026rsquo;s Windows Terminal . After logging in successfully, enter this command to edit the OpenVPN configuration file:\nvim /etc/config/OpenVPN If the file does not open, your OpenWrt system may not have vim, a command-line text editor, installed. Please search for how to install it; I will not go into that here.\nAfter entering the editor, press I to enter insert mode. Move the cursor to the end of the file and paste this line as the final line:\noption duplicate_cn \u0026#39;1\u0026#39; After editing, press ESC, then enter the following command to save and exit:\n:qw After completing these steps, restart the router. If nothing unexpected happens, multiple clients should now be able to connect to your LAN at the same time.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210413/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMost OpenWrt soft-router systems we use day to day include the \u003ca href=\"https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-user/luci/start\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eLuCI interface\u003c/a\u003e\n. It provides a convenient visual admin page, and thanks to contributions from many developers, it also supports plenty of easy-to-use graphical apps. \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/DavBfr/luci-app-OpenVPN-server\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eluci-app-OpenVPN-server\u003c/a\u003e\n is one of the more common VPN server apps for LuCI.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIn simple terms, \u003ccode\u003eluci-app-OpenVPN-server\u003c/code\u003e is a LuCI interface for the OpenVPN server. With it, you can avoid the troublesome command line and configure your OpenVPN server directly through a web UI. Combined with OpenVPN client apps on major platforms, you can connect to your home LAN from anywhere for internal access or file transfer.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Allowing Multiple Devices to Connect to an OpenVPN Server in OpenWrt LuCI"},{"content":"Since I usually need to deal with a large amount of content with a complex structure, and there are cross-reference relationships between various content sections, I have been looking for a content management tool that can not only meet my needs, but is also simple and easy to use. Note-taking services such as Evernote or OneNote seem to be the most common, but firstly, storing all private content on the servers of commercial companies always makes me feel insecure; secondly, these software are either not lightweight enough or charge extra for important functions, so I have never been very satisfied.\nTwo years ago, I came across a cross-platform software called Notion . I was very satisfied with both its functions and interface, but its price was not cheap. After all, I am not a professional creator who relies on content, and I was not willing to pay monthly for a note-taking software. In addition, Notion still cannot achieve convenient multi-end synchronization while firmly controlling content data, which is also a big regret. Until today, I accidentally learned about a GitHub open source project called Trilium through the introduction of Minority article , which almost perfectly meets all my needs. First of all, it is an open source project that supports self-built note servers, which allows me to achieve multi-end synchronization while firmly controlling the control of notes; secondly, its interface is simple and very lightweight, and you can even discard the client and fully realize web access; finally, it is completely free, which is very important.\nSince buying QNAP (https://www.qnap.com/zh-cn/ ) NAS, I have become more and more inclined to save all kinds of my data on the NAS, and then use various open source software to achieve multi-end synchronization. This not only ensures data security and personal privacy, but also allows you to conveniently manage your files and data. I think it is worth it to have complete control over personal data at a cost of several thousand yuan and a small electricity bill. Therefore, after realizing that Trilium provided open source server software, I immediately started setting up a local server.\nTrilium\u0026rsquo;s official documentation provides specific methods for installing Trilium Server through Docker . However, since the document is in English and only provides the SSH command installation method, it may be difficult for some novices to read it. Therefore, this article will briefly describe the installation method of Trilium Server in a graphical manner.\nFirst, install the Docker suite (called Container Station in QNAP’s QTS) on your NAS and open it. Enter \u0026ldquo;Create\u0026rdquo; and search for Trilium in the search box, find zadam/trilium, and click \u0026ldquo;Install\u0026rdquo; on the right. In the pop-up creation window, click \u0026ldquo;Advanced Settings\u0026rdquo; and first set Trilium\u0026rsquo;s port forwarding in the \u0026ldquo;Network\u0026rdquo; tab. Trilium\u0026rsquo;s default web interface default port is 8080, so the Container\u0026rsquo;s port must be written as 8080, and the mapped host port can be filled in according to your own needs. For the convenience of memory, I prefer to have consistent settings for the internal and external ports, that is, the host port is also set to 8080, but if your NAS\u0026rsquo;s 8080 port is already occupied by other programs, please fill in other ports. Next, in the Shared Folders tab, mount a shared folder in the container to Trilium. The mounting path in the container must be written as /trilium-data, and the local shared folder can be selected according to your own needs. Note that the permissions for mounting the shared folder must be both read and write. After the above settings are completed, click the \u0026ldquo;Create\u0026rdquo; button, and the system will automatically download the image file and install the container according to your configuration. Once the container is installed, you can access Trilium\u0026rsquo;s web interface by entering the NAS IP/port in your browser. When using Trilium for the first time, you need to perform some simple initialization settings, such as creating a username and password. Although the interface is only in English, it is very simple and I won’t go into details here.\nAt this point, we have completed setting up our own note server. Regarding the specific usage of Trilium, you can explore or search by yourself. Generally speaking, the threshold for using this tool is not high. This article of mine is written in Trilium. Trilium supports Markdown syntax, so there is almost no barrier to use for me. In addition, Trilium\u0026rsquo;s web interface supports mobile layout. As long as DDNS and router port mapping are done, you can access your notes anywhere and anytime, whether using a computer or mobile phone.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20210320/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eSince I usually need to deal with a large amount of content with a complex structure, and there are cross-reference relationships between various content sections, I have been looking for a content management tool that can not only meet my needs, but is also simple and easy to use. Note-taking services such as Evernote or OneNote seem to be the most common, but firstly, storing all private content on the servers of commercial companies always makes me feel insecure; secondly, these software are either not lightweight enough or charge extra for important functions, so I have never been very satisfied.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Building a Trilium Notes Server with Docker"},{"content":"At this moment, I am sitting in a dormitory somewhere in the Banan industrial district, staring at a fingerprint-covered laptop, trying to think of anything from this difficult year that still makes me reluctant to let go.\nAs usual, when I write this kind of half-coherent year-end summary, I put on headphones and loop a song that can make me feel either sentimental or excited. This year, what I have kept listening to is still Li Zhi\u0026rsquo;s unplugged version of \u0026ldquo;Rehe\u0026rdquo; from his 2018 New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve concert. It is odd: the song is called \u0026ldquo;Rehe,\u0026rdquo; but it is really about Nanjing. Just as when I was in Shanghai, I passed Shunyi Road every day but never once went to Beijing.\nI do not know when Nanjing became a synonym for \u0026ldquo;hometown\u0026rdquo; to me. Perhaps it is because every time I went home for a holiday, I first flew to Nanjing Lukou Airport and then took a train back to Wuhu. Perhaps it is because whenever I introduced my hometown to someone, I would unconsciously say, \u0026ldquo;My hometown is Wuhu, Anhui, right next to Nanjing.\u0026rdquo; Or perhaps it is because whenever I mention \u0026ldquo;China,\u0026rdquo; I think of Nanjing.\nNo one who did not graduate the same year as me can really know how hard it was to find a job in China after Covid. I once badly wanted to settle in Shanghai, but the brutal job search left me so heartbroken that when I boarded the plane to Shenzhen, I felt no attachment at all and did not look back. Of course, I have no particular opinion about the stereotypical \u0026ldquo;Shanghainese,\u0026rdquo; and I do not think Shanghai is especially hard to integrate into. I simply feel that maybe a place like Shenzhen, with so little tradition, is better suited for my survival. After all, I dislike history and hate tradition.\nGrandall is a good law firm, because it took me in when I was most helpless and gave me a platform good enough to hone my skills. I had wanted wholeheartedly to do litigation, but by a twist of fate I stepped onto the path of non-litigation legal work. If I give up the ideal of helping the poor and the wronged, and think only of living a decent life, then law is just a craft for making a living. So I gave up illusions long ago. From the moment I arrived in this cultural desert in the south, backpack on my shoulders and suitcase in hand, youth had already gone with the wind.\nOne year ago today, I had a fever of 40 degrees and was shivering at a Xie Chunhua concert. At the same time, Li Wenliang sent the WeChat message that would enter human history. Then the whistle sounded, and the whole world changed. I vaguely remember that the theme of Xie Chunhua\u0026rsquo;s concert was \u0026ldquo;2020, please be kinder to me.\u0026rdquo; Well, it was fairly kind to me after all. At least in its final two months, my life showed a small turn for the better.\nLate at night, I often curse in my heart the fathers who left our generation such a mess. This country has placed so many burdens on its \u0026ldquo;successors\u0026rdquo; that, even without abortion or sterilization, the number of newborns is falling year by year. That may hurt Durex\u0026rsquo;s share price. But maybe that is fine. I have never liked monopoly capital, if Durex counts as a monopoly. Still, what happens next? I cannot see a way out. Perhaps for an individual, escaping Sodom is the better plan. Unfortunately, Covid arrived just then and cut in half the last false friendly tie between countries.\nTomorrow, I will leave Banan, ride the light rail for two hours to Yubei, and fly home. Of course, Wuhu has no airport. My destination is still Nanjing. But for Nanjing, my hometown lies behind me, by the riverbank, in Quanjiao County, Anhui.\nDecember 31, 2020, Banan, Chongqing\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20201231/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt this moment, I am sitting in a dormitory somewhere in the Banan industrial district, staring at a fingerprint-covered laptop, trying to think of anything from this difficult year that still makes me reluctant to let go.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs usual, when I write this kind of half-coherent year-end summary, I put on headphones and loop a song that can make me feel either sentimental or excited. This year, what I have kept listening to is still Li Zhi\u0026rsquo;s unplugged version of \u0026ldquo;Rehe\u0026rdquo; from his 2018 New Year\u0026rsquo;s Eve concert. It is odd: the song is called \u0026ldquo;Rehe,\u0026rdquo; but it is really about Nanjing. Just as when I was in Shanghai, I passed Shunyi Road every day but never once went to Beijing.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Behind Me, by the Riverbank, Quanjiao County, Anhui"},{"content":"To access devices on a home or office LAN, such as a NAS , from outside the local network, there are usually two methods.\nThe first is to set up a VPN server on the router inside the LAN, then connect an external device to the internal network as a VPN client. In this case, the VPN acts like a network cable. An outside device connected through the VPN is effectively connected to the LAN by a virtual cable, so it can access internal resources almost as if it were physically inside the network.\nThe second method is simpler and more direct: use dynamic DNS to bind a domain name to the public IP address of the LAN server, then expose internal devices to the public internet through port forwarding. For well-known reasons, VPN connections inside China are often unstable, so most people choose the second method for internal network access.\nPort forwarding on a router is simple. Taking OpenWrt as an example, you only need to create a forwarding rule under Network -\u0026gt; Firewall -\u0026gt; Port Forwards, mapping the relevant port of the internal device to an external port.\nHowever, the internal IP address of a LAN device can change as DHCP leases renew. Although we can manually fix a device\u0026rsquo;s IP address through IP/MAC binding, practice shows that this is not always stable. As a result, port forwarding rules often need manual updates, which makes maintenance tedious. If we are away from home for a long time and cannot access the LAN, modifying those rules becomes difficult.\nThis is where UPnP, Universal Plug and Play, comes in. As the name suggests, it is a tool for automatically configuring port forwarding. As long as the server and other internal devices enable UPnP and are configured properly, port forwarding can be handled once and for all.\nUsing Synology and OpenWrt as an example, first install and enable the UPnP service on the OpenWrt router.\nThen log in to the Synology admin panel. Go to Control Panel -\u0026gt; External Access -\u0026gt; Router Configuration, and choose Set up router. The system will automatically detect the network environment, router model, and configuration. If nothing unexpected happens, the whole process can be completed automatically without manual setup.\nAfter that, click Create, choose the applications and ports you want to forward, and click Save.\nFinally, return to the UPnP page in the router admin panel and check the port forwarding rules that were automatically added.\nOne thing to note: Chinese ISPs generally block ports 443 and 445 on residential broadband. Port 443 is the default HTTPS port, and 445 is the default SMB port. So even if you add automatic mappings for these two ports through UPnP, external access through 443 and 445 will not work.\nIn that case, you need to manually configure port forwarding in the firewall: map internal ports 443 and 445 to external ports other than 443 or 445, such as 444 and 446, depending on your preference. This lets you bypass the ISP block and access those services from outside.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200914/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo access devices on a home or office LAN, such as a \u003ca href=\"https://baike.baidu.com/item/NAS\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eNAS\u003c/a\u003e\n, from outside the local network, there are usually two methods.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe first is to set up a VPN server on the router inside the LAN, then connect an external device to the internal network as a VPN client. In this case, the \u003ca href=\"https://baike.baidu.com/item/VPN\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eVPN\u003c/a\u003e\n acts like a network cable. An outside device connected through the VPN is effectively connected to the LAN by a virtual cable, so it can access internal resources almost as if it were physically inside the network.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Automatic Port Forwarding with Synology and an OpenWrt Router"},{"content":"The so-called \u0026ldquo;14-day self-health management\u0026rdquo; system, which is just a prettified way of saying \u0026ldquo;14-day quarantine,\u0026rdquo; is a perfect example of lazy governance.\nThis afternoon, I dragged a large suitcase and a big package of deliveries to the gate on Guangfu West Road. The package contained replacement bedding. The reason I had to carry it around myself was that the closed-campus policy does not allow couriers to enter, forcing me to pick it up from the Cainiao station and bring it back to school.\nAt the gate, a clumsy security guard told us to line up for \u0026ldquo;identity verification.\u0026rdquo; The cursed facial-recognition system showed the same dead expression no matter who stood in front of it: \u0026ldquo;Recognition failed. Please swipe card and try again.\u0026rdquo; So we had to register on paper one by one. I later learned that the return-to-campus verification system apparently had not been loaded with any student information at all. In other words, the machine that kept repeating \u0026ldquo;Recognition failed. Please swipe card and try again\u0026rdquo; was nothing but a decoration. Every student waiting for \u0026ldquo;identity verification\u0026rdquo; had to register manually.\nPerhaps my ten-digit student number was too complicated. The security guard acting on orders simply could not find my information in the thick student roster. So, while several girls behind me dragged suitcases and waited anxiously, I had to search the roster myself, fill out the form myself, pass through a \u0026ldquo;temperature check room\u0026rdquo; with no staff inside, and finally enter the campus I had not seen in a long time, smoothly and quickly.\nAfter settling in, I packed up the bedding that had lain alone for eight months during the pandemic and mailed it home together with a Mi Band 3. Since I had prepared a brand-new set of bedding for this return, the old, possibly moldy \u0026ldquo;lonely bedding\u0026rdquo; became extra stuff that had to be shipped away. I sent the dead Mi Band 3 back too because 33 wanted to use it as her alarm clock and phone notification device, exactly the way I had used it.\nSince becoming homeroom teacher of the international class at Beijing No. 11 School, her habit of being unreachable by phone no matter how urgent the matter seems to have improved. Apparently what really makes a person mature is not gentle persuasion from a loved one, but a beating from society. I am quite pleased by this small change in her.\nI did not expect registration at this magical school to close at 4 p.m. today. So after calmly enjoying a surprisingly good dinner at the Hexi canteen and walking to the check-in machine near the entrance of Building 40, which had been standing there dumbly waiting for people to swipe cards before 4 p.m., I found that the machine had disappeared. Soon after, the class monitor sent a notice: \u0026ldquo;Registration closes at 4 p.m. on the 13th. Students on the following list, including me of course, did not register in time. Please complete supplementary registration tomorrow at the terminal on the first floor of Building 40,\u0026rdquo; which was exactly where I was standing.\nAt night, it suddenly rained heavily during my \u0026ldquo;cross-district shower.\u0026rdquo; I should explain that I am not adding \u0026ldquo;cross-district\u0026rdquo; before \u0026ldquo;shower\u0026rdquo; to be mysterious. At this magical school, almost all students living east of the river, except those in Building 1 who have their own bathrooms, must cross Suzhou Creek to shower in the public bathhouse on the west side. As everyone knows, Suzhou Creek is the boundary between Putuo District and Changning District. So every night\u0026rsquo;s shower is, in the strictest sense, a cross-district operation.\nConsidering Shanghai\u0026rsquo;s status as a directly administered municipality, what we cross while showering is actually two city-level administrative units. You can imagine our mood when a downpour hits during this cross-district shower. Especially when we saw two sets of bedding by the roadside completely soaked by the rain. Regrettably, their owners seemed to have forgotten the basic common sense that bedding should be brought in before dark. Our good mood became even better.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200913/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThe so-called \u0026ldquo;14-day self-health management\u0026rdquo; system, which is just a prettified way of saying \u0026ldquo;14-day quarantine,\u0026rdquo; is a perfect example of lazy governance.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis afternoon, I dragged a large suitcase and a big package of deliveries to the gate on Guangfu West Road. The package contained replacement bedding. The reason I had to carry it around myself was that the closed-campus policy does not allow couriers to enter, forcing me to pick it up from the Cainiao station and bring it back to school.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Back-to-School Notes"},{"content":"Huawei launches \u0026ldquo;Nanniwan\u0026rdquo; project Today, a [news] about Huawei suddenly spread on the Internet (https://tech.163.com/20/0804/13/FJ6L182N00097U7S.html) . \u0026ldquo;Kechuangban Daily\u0026rdquo; reported that Huawei has launched the \u0026ldquo;Nanniwan\u0026rdquo; project to accelerate the development of its laptops, smart TVs and other products, aiming to avoid products containing American technology. This marks that under increasingly severe external pressure, Huawei has to shift its attention away from areas with higher technology density such as 5g and chips, and instead invest in areas with lower technology density such as consumer electronics. Because compared to the former, investment in consumer electronics can not only circumvent technological blockades and sanctions from Western countries, but also enable Huawei to obtain higher sales profits with less research and development costs. As a company with shareholders at the top and employees at the bottom, this strategic shift is completely in line with Huawei\u0026rsquo;s interests and can be said to achieve multiple goals with one stone.\nBut what is very regrettable is that as a company famous for its high technology, Huawei, which was once regarded as the \u0026ldquo;national pride\u0026rdquo; by many patriots, cannot escape the fate of \u0026ldquo;involution\u0026rdquo;. Personally, I believe that Huawei, which was forced to launch the \u0026ldquo;Nanniwan\u0026rdquo; project, and ByteDance, which was forced to sell Tiktok, together constitute the epitome of the embarrassing situation of my country\u0026rsquo;s national enterprises in this era. They also have extraordinary innovation capabilities, are also trying to go out of China and into the world, and they once truly had world-class influence. However, under the influence of a series of untimely strategies or policies by the government, they had to give up their martial arts skills, turn their long-term vision of targeting the international market to the domestic market, and become one of the participants in the domestic competition that has been fought like the Red Sea**.\nSome people will blame the embarrassing situation of Huawei and ByteDance on the exclusion and suppression of Western countries led by the United States. They believe that in order to maintain its hegemony, the United States has to use various means to suppress China\u0026rsquo;s outstanding companies. Others blame the Chinese government\u0026rsquo;s strategic misjudgments and policy mistakes for the unfavorable situation of Chinese enterprises. They believe that the government\u0026rsquo;s reduced credibility and a series of excessive diplomatic words and deeds are the real reasons that hinder national enterprises from \u0026ldquo;going global\u0026rdquo; and plunge Chinese society into involution. No matter which view you take, there is no denying the fact that almost all social entities, including national enterprises, have inevitably stepped out of the golden age of China\u0026rsquo;s development. What follows will be a \u0026ldquo;cold winter\u0026rdquo; that will not be too short.\nThe involution crisis of Chinese society The concept of “involution” was mentioned earlier. The so-called involution refers to the phenomenon that a certain society stagnates after developing to a certain stage, and extremely fierce but meaningless competition occurs among its internal members, resulting in the inability of the society as a whole to move to a more advanced stage. Although it is still doubtful whether the development of human society must follow the law of \u0026ldquo;from lower to higher\u0026rdquo;, it is undeniable that, as a purely empirical induction, the phenomenon of involution does occur from time to time in human history. For example, the mainstream view in academic circles believes that without the intervention of Western civilization, the Qing Empire would not have been able to develop modern capitalism by relying on its own strength alone, nor would it have been able to modernize politically or ideologically. It can be said that compared with Western European countries, China in the 19th century or even earlier had actually fallen into the quagmire of involution.Similar to the idea of ​​involution, there is also the concept of the so-called \u0026ldquo;middle-income trap\u0026rdquo;. It refers to a situation where a country has reached a certain level of income due to certain advantages, but remains at that economic level and cannot develop further**. So far, countries recognized by the world as having fallen into the middle-income trap include Brazil and South Africa. They have all experienced a period of rapid growth, but as labor costs continue to increase, these countries have lost their original competitive advantages. At the same time, industrial transformation and technological progress did not arrive in time. Therefore, after these countries reached the middle-income level, they fell into a long period of stagnation until today.\nChinese society is currently on the verge of involution or the middle-income trap. With the successive failures of institutional reform and industrial transformation, China\u0026rsquo;s economic development has gradually lost momentum. Coupled with the impact of many \u0026ldquo;black swan\u0026rdquo; events such as the COVID-19 epidemic and nationwide floods, it is no longer possible to return to the past high-speed growth state. Under such circumstances, large-scale salary cuts and even unemployment are inevitable. The extension of working hours and the reduction of employee benefits are nothing more than a few waves in this historical trend. A more turbulent reality is still to come in the near future.\nSince 2018, the anxiety permeating the urban middle class has been increasing day by day. The huge tension between sluggish income growth and rising housing prices is eroding the lives of the middle class. Especially the younger generation who have just entered society are already facing huge competitive pressure due to excessive enrollment expansion in colleges and universities and the disconnect between the teaching system and social needs. The overall deterioration of the economic situation has made the already fierce competition even more severe. In recent years, the trend of candidates for non-professional skills positions becoming more highly educated has become increasingly apparent. Jobs that only required a college degree to get an interview ten years ago now require a bachelor\u0026rsquo;s degree or above as a stepping stone. This phenomenon is not a manifestation of the increase in the popularity of higher education in our country, but a manifestation of social involution. In an involutional society, individual competition that was supposed to promote the overall development of society has become meaningless internal friction.\nCauses and solutions for involution Fundamentally speaking, the reason why a society will become involution is because its own development model is too radical and its industrial structure lacks stamina, not because of the exploitation or ulterior motives of so-called developed countries. A famous conspiracy theory related to the latter attribution method believes that the reason why Japan quickly slid from the rapid growth stage in the 1980s to collapse and decline, leading to the \u0026ldquo;lost 30 years (1990-2020)\u0026rdquo;, is because it signed the \u0026ldquo;Plaza Accord\u0026rdquo; with Western countries headed by the United States. This agreement was considered by many Chinese people as evidence that the United States suppressed the development of Japan, then the world\u0026rsquo;s second largest economy, in order to maintain its world hegemony.But the truth is not that simple. The Plaza Accord was originally intended to devalue the U.S. dollar in order to promote U.S. product exports. However, with the help of a series of fiscal and monetary policies by Japan\u0026rsquo;s Ministry of Finance, the yen appreciated rapidly. A large amount of hot money poured into the Japanese market, causing Japan\u0026rsquo;s stock market and housing prices to soar since the signing of the Agreement in 1985 until the bubble burst in the early 1990s. In this process, Japan’s Ministry of Finance’s decision-making errors and improper handling were the real reasons for the expansion and bursting of the bubble. The Plaza Accord, which many Chinese people talk about, was at best a trigger. Therefore, it is useless to blame the stagnation or decline of a country\u0026rsquo;s economy on the suppression of external forces. To avoid the decline and involution of society as a whole, we must face the shortcomings of our own development model, reflect on policy mistakes and lessons, and constantly seek industrial transformation methods that suit our national conditions.\nIn the mainstream political theory of modernization, the government should assume the function of safeguarding the development of individuals and enterprises. As for the direction and path of development, even if it does not appear in the economic blueprint of public opinion organs (such as Congress), it should be left to the people themselves to decide. Empty plans without scrutiny will only become a shackles for the development of individuals and enterprises, restricting their own progress. As for the implementation of \u0026ldquo;wolf warrior diplomacy\u0026rdquo; to arouse the resentment of the international community and then backfire on one\u0026rsquo;s own national enterprises, it is far from the responsibilities of a modern government. If we ignore this and fail to examine any mistakes, no matter how many \u0026ldquo;strategies\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;initiatives\u0026rdquo; we launch to increase production capacity, it will not help. The arrival of involution will not be delayed by the rejection of personal will, and the fate of the Chinese people must be in their own hands.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200804/","summary":"\u003ch1 id=\"huawei-launches-nanniwan-project\"\u003eHuawei launches \u0026ldquo;Nanniwan\u0026rdquo; project\u003c/h1\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eToday, a [news] about Huawei suddenly spread on the Internet (\u003ca href=\"https://tech.163.com/20/0804/13/FJ6L182N00097U7S.html%29\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://tech.163.com/20/0804/13/FJ6L182N00097U7S.html)\u003c/a\u003e\n. \u0026ldquo;Kechuangban Daily\u0026rdquo; reported that Huawei has launched the \u0026ldquo;Nanniwan\u0026rdquo; project to accelerate the development of its laptops, smart TVs and other products, aiming to avoid products containing American technology. This marks that under increasingly severe external pressure, Huawei has to shift its attention away from areas with higher technology density such as 5g and chips, and instead invest in areas with lower technology density such as consumer electronics. Because compared to the former, investment in consumer electronics can not only circumvent technological blockades and sanctions from Western countries, but also enable Huawei to obtain higher sales profits with less research and development costs. As a company with shareholders at the top and employees at the bottom, this strategic shift is completely in line with Huawei\u0026rsquo;s interests and can be said to achieve multiple goals with one stone.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Huawei’s “Nanniwan” Project and the Involution of Chinese Society"},{"content":"This summer, southern my country suffered a rare flood in history. Many residents in rural areas not only suffered huge economic losses due to flood discharges or dyke breaches, but also had to leave their hometowns and become refugees in other places. In the face of huge losses and pain, doubts and accusations about policies will inevitably arise. Many residents who were on the verge of bankruptcy or homeless due to flood discharges expressed their complaints through social networks. In most cases, these complaints can be recognized and sympathized by netizens, but criticism and accusations also follow.\nCritics believe that both plagues and floods are natural disasters that cannot be controlled by humans. Everyone is equal before natural disasters, and disasters and losses are inevitable. Those refugees who are financially bankrupt or homeless can only say that they are unlucky and have no one to blame. Besides, the government has done its best to fight floods and provide disaster relief. It has worked very hard. Why do you blame it?\nMencius had already given a powerful response to this voice more than two thousand years ago. There is a famous exposition in \u0026ldquo;Mencius: King Hui of Liang\u0026rdquo;, which is considered by later generations to be the basis of Mencius\u0026rsquo; thought of \u0026ldquo;benevolent government\u0026rdquo;.\nKing Hui of Liang said: \u0026ldquo;I only care about my country with all my heart and ears. If there is trouble in the river, move the people to the east of the river, and move the millet to the river. The same is true for the trouble in the east of the river. If you look at the government of neighboring countries, you can\u0026rsquo;t compare with the intentions of the few. If the people of the neighboring countries don\u0026rsquo;t increase the number, and the people of the neighbors don\u0026rsquo;t increase the number, why not?\u0026rdquo;\nKing Hui of Liang said [to Mencius]: \u0026ldquo;I have put all my efforts into this country. When there was a famine in Hanoi, I moved the people there to the east of the river, and then transported the grain from the east of the river to Hanoi. I will do the same when there is a disaster in the east of the river. I have also inspected the internal affairs of neighboring countries, and none of them can be as attentive as me. But the people of those countries have not decreased, and my people have not increased. What is the reason?\nThere is a background that needs to be explained here. ** Mencius, as an advocate of the idea of ​​benevolent government, would tell him every time he met a monarch: A country that implements benevolent government will continue to attract people from other countries to settle there; a country that does not implement benevolent government will not be able to retain people, and the people there will vote with their feet and continue to immigrate to countries that implement benevolent government**. In this case, since the population is the foundation of a country\u0026rsquo;s prosperity, \u0026ldquo;benevolent government\u0026rdquo; is an excellent way to make the country prosperous and ultimately make the country rich and powerful.\nMencius tried to use this set of rhetoric to induce the monarchs of various countries to implement benevolent policies driven by the dream of a great nation. Because in Mencius\u0026rsquo; theory, benevolent government is a necessary condition for a strong country. The reason why King Hui of Liang asked the question mentioned above was precisely because he heard Mencius\u0026rsquo;s rhetoric about benevolent government. We don’t know whether King Hui of Liang asked the question sincerely or deliberately made things difficult for Mencius. But in any case, this passage from King Hui of Liang is a powerful challenge to Mencius’ theory of benevolent government. So how did Mencius respond to such a challenge?\nMencius said to him: \u0026ldquo;The king likes war, please use the metaphor of war. After filling up the drum, the weapon was connected, abandoning the armor and dragging the soldiers away. It may take a hundred steps and then stop, or it may take fifty steps and then stop. What if you take fifty steps and laugh at a hundred steps? Said: \u0026ldquo;No; if it is not straight for a hundred paces, it is also walking.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;If the king knows this,\u0026rdquo; he said, \u0026ldquo;there is no hope that the people will be more numerous than those of neighboring countries.\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;Mencius replied: \u0026ldquo;Your Majesty, you like to fight, so let me use war as an analogy. If some people abandon their armor and drag their weapons and run away at the beginning of the war. Some people run a hundred steps before stopping, and some people stop after running fifty steps. Under such circumstances, can those who ran fifty steps laugh at those who ran a hundred steps?\u0026rdquo; King Hui of Liang said: \u0026ldquo;Of course not, although he did not run to one hundred steps. A hundred steps, but this is also an escape. \u0026ldquo;Isn\u0026rsquo;t this a fool\u0026rsquo;s errand?\u0026rdquo; Yes, that’s right! The idiom \u0026ldquo;laughing at fifty steps and laughing at a hundred steps\u0026rdquo; comes from here.\nAfter hearing King Hui of Liang\u0026rsquo;s answer, Mencius secretly rejoiced, thinking that you had finally fallen into my trap. Mencius said: \u0026ldquo;Since your Majesty understands this truth, then stop hoping that your people will be more numerous than those of your neighboring countries.\u0026rdquo; Next, Mencius used a long and rigorous discussion to demonstrate why King Hui of Liang tried his best to provide disaster relief, but he was still the same as those countries that did not implement benevolent governance, unable to obtain the dividends of benevolent governance. King Hui of Liang laughed at the lack of benevolent government in other countries, but he was actually \u0026ldquo;laughing at fifty steps and laughing at a hundred steps\u0026rdquo;. His policies were not essentially different from those of other countries.\nGrain, fish and turtles cannot be eaten, and wood cannot be used. This is to make the people live and die without regret. Maintaining one\u0026rsquo;s health and losing one\u0026rsquo;s life without regrets is the beginning of the king\u0026rsquo;s way.\nThere is so much food, fish and meat that they can\u0026rsquo;t eat it all, and there is so much wood that they can\u0026rsquo;t use it up. This makes the people have no dissatisfaction with life, death and burial. The people no longer had any dissatisfaction with life, care, death, and burial, and the royal way began.\nIf you don’t take away a hundred acres of land, then a family of several people will not be hungry. I sincerely follow the teachings of Xiangxu⒂, apply the meaning of filial piety and brotherhood, and award the white ones to live up to the road. Those who are seventy years old can wear silk and eat meat, and the people are neither hungry nor cold. However, there is no king who is not king.\nIf a family has hundreds of acres of arable land and does not hinder their production, then the family can have enough to eat. If you run some good schools and educate them in the principles of filial piety and brotherhood, then the gray-haired old people will no longer have to carry heavy loads on their backs. Even the elderly over seventy years old have clothes to wear and meat to eat, and the people of Li are neither hungry nor cold. It is impossible for such a country not to make the world submit.\nA dog eats human food but does not know how to check it; when a person dies, he says, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not me, it\u0026rsquo;s Sui.\u0026rdquo; ’ How is this different from stabbing someone and killing them, saying, ‘It’s not me, it’s a soldier. ’ When the king was innocent, all the people in the world were here.\n[This is not the case now] The pigs and dogs of the rich eat the people\u0026rsquo;s food without checking or stopping it. In ordinary years, there are corpses of people who died of starvation on the road, but they never thought that the granary should be opened for rescue. When he kills someone, he says, \u0026ldquo;It\u0026rsquo;s not my fault, it\u0026rsquo;s just a bad year.\u0026rdquo; ’ This statement is equivalent to stabbing someone to death with a knife, but saying, I didn’t kill the person, but a weapon. Your Majesty, if you do not shift the responsibility to natural disasters [but carry out fundamental reforms to the system], then people from other countries will naturally come to seek refuge.\nCompared with remedial measures after natural disasters, Mencius obviously paid more attention to the overall welfare of society. As long as the government no longer imposes excessive taxes and uses heavy taxes and rising housing prices to drain the people\u0026rsquo;s economy, then even if plagues and floods come, the people themselves will have a strong ability to resist and will not go bankrupt or cut off their supply as soon as they lose their jobs. Therefore, in Mencius’ view, free markets and social welfare are safety nets that help people resist natural disasters. Only with these can it be called the true \u0026ldquo;kingly way\u0026rdquo;, attract the people of other countries to yearn for it, and finally make the world return to its heart. And those who readily shift the blame to natural disasters, no matter how hard they try to provide disaster relief and rescue operations, are still far from the right path. These people laugh at other countries, just like taking fifty steps to laugh at a hundred steps.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200728/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eThis summer, southern my country suffered a rare flood in history. Many residents in rural areas not only suffered huge economic losses due to flood discharges or dyke breaches, but also had to leave their hometowns and become refugees in other places. In the face of huge losses and pain, doubts and accusations about policies will inevitably arise. Many residents who were on the verge of bankruptcy or homeless due to flood discharges expressed their complaints through social networks. In most cases, these complaints can be recognized and sympathized by netizens, but criticism and accusations also follow.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Natural disasters and people’s livelihood, Mencius’ view of social welfare"},{"content":"Many years later, when I opened this moldy CD book from more than ten years ago, I remembered those sultry afternoons in middle school, when I squeezed into the small cubicle on the second floor of the computer city to select pirated game CDs. At that time, China was in an era when game consoles had not yet been banned, digital copyrights were not popularized, and physical channels were extremely scarce. At that time, poor students could only rely on pirated discs on the street and cracked game forums to access and play the latest stand-alone games. I am no exception.\nSimilar to the traditional audio and video industry, the piracy era of Chinese video games has ended with the end of the physical era**. In the physical era when audio and video products are still distributed in physical discs or tapes, a country with lax enforcement of intellectual property rights will inevitably see widespread piracy. A pirated disc like this costs 2 yuan a piece, and there is almost no technical threshold for production. However, with the popularization of the Internet, digital copyright has gradually replaced physical channels and become the most important distribution method for audio and video products. People\u0026rsquo;s usage habits of audio-visual products have also gradually changed during this process. Traditional DVD players and tape players have been gradually eliminated, and mobile phones, computers, and a series of portable digital media players have become mainstream. By this time, physical pirated discs were on their way out.\nThe Tao is one foot high and the devil is one foot high. Early online digital distribution, due to many limitations of network bandwidth and traffic, could only be carried out in the form of digital copies. This provides new opportunities for piracy. Although the traditional physical piracy industry has declined at this time, because digital copies are easy to copy and spread, the spread of piracy in the form of BT and eDonkey has become increasingly rampant. Even though publishers are racking their brains to technically protect digital copy services, such as encrypting the file format of digital copies, or requiring buyers to use their own playback software for playback, etc. But these efforts were in vain. Cracking or reverse engineering has been the main technical weapon of online piracy channels for a long time.\nToday, digital streaming services, or online streaming services, have brought this dispute to a complete end**. Different from the previous methods of selling or distributing through downloading or copying, digital streaming services provide consumers with a convenient experience of clicking and playing without downloading. For example, Spotify and Netflix, although the latter also started out as a physical disc rental business, their main businesses today are subscription-based digital streaming services. The improvement of network infrastructure and the reduction of traffic rates have made it possible to enjoy streaming services through the network anytime and anywhere. In this tug-of-war over intellectual property rights, technological progress has undoubtedly given copyright owners a good chance of victory.\nElectronic games have also experienced a similar development process, but compared to the traditional audio and video industry, games occupy larger data capacity, and their interactive consumption methods also require more specific environments and hardware. Therefore, digital copy services represented by Steam became popular later than the music or movie industry. Nowadays, as long as we connect a network cable, we can download digital games at high speed without purchasing physical game discs. Those \u0026ldquo;tomato plates\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;banana plates\u0026rdquo; full of memories have gradually appeared on the stage of history.As I said before, the consumption method of video games is interactive, which has extremely high requirements on the timeliness of operation and feedback. This is the real reason why the game industry has been slow to move from the digital copy era to the streaming era. The so-called digital streaming service of electronic games refers to a new consumption method in which players do not need to download game data locally, but only accept the game screen and send operation instructions through the network to complete the playing process. It is also called \u0026ldquo;cloud gaming\u0026rdquo; by some people because game data will always be stored on the service provider\u0026rsquo;s cloud server.\nIn 2019, Google launched its game streaming service Stadia at its annual game developers conference, GDC 2019. Google said that through Stadia, players do not need to download any game data locally, and can play the latest video games with 4K60 frames on devices on different platforms through the Chrome browser. This is what digital streaming services like Netflix have achieved in the field of video games.\nAt present, it seems that the only obstacle facing ** game streaming services is network latency**. When we usually play online games, a delay of about 100ms can bring an excellent gaming experience. But the network delay here only occurs when we interact with other players. In other words, there is no delay problem for the characters controlled by our players. Because all the game resources we see have been downloaded locally in advance. Game streaming is completely different. It requires our network to not only transmit a large amount of game resource data in real time, but also to be able to transmit our control instructions back to the cloud in a timely manner, and then the cloud calculates the feedback corresponding to our control instructions and the game screens corresponding to these feedbacks. This entire process must be completed within 10ms so that players will not feel obvious operational lag.\nTraditional optical fiber networks or cellular mobile networks are of course unable to meet the stringent network latency requirements of game streaming. But in the not-too-distant future, with the popularization of 5G standards, high-bandwidth, low-latency networks are almost within sight. With the support of these new technologies, game streaming services that people once thought were impossible will actually come to people.\nOn June 12, Sony finally announced PlayStation’s next-generation game console: PS5. Microsoft also announced details of its next-generation console, Xbox Series X, a few months ago. Compared with the previous generation, the performance improvement of these two new consoles is actually very limited, far less than the progress from PS2 to PS3. This is why these two new consoles caused controversy as soon as they were announced. As the biggest highlight of PS5, the high-speed solid-state drive is derided by many people as a gimmick.\nIt is foreseeable that as the price of PC hardware continues to decrease and game streaming services become more popular in the future, the living space of game consoles will become smaller and smaller**. Video games will always exist, but the carrier carrying them will shift from physical to online. Just like we no longer need to buy special MP3 players to listen to music, one day we will no longer need special game consoles. PS5 may be the last generation, game consoles will eventually die, and the trend of game streaming is unstoppable.I am actually a loyal Sony and Nintendo player, and console games have brought me a lot of happy times. Just like when I was in middle school, I took out my Sony music player and put on my headphones to listen to Pink Floyd during my lazy lunch break. It will eventually become a beautiful past along with my youth.\nMy name is Gu Yue. Thank you for listening to \u0026ldquo;Ge Wu Zhi\u0026rdquo;. I will try my best to learn more about history and society in this program. If you like this episode, please subscribe to my channel, or give my video a like, and leave your thoughts in the comment area. See you next time.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200628/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany years later, when I opened this moldy CD book from more than ten years ago, I remembered those sultry afternoons in middle school, when I squeezed into the small cubicle on the second floor of the computer city to select pirated game CDs. At that time, China was in an era when game consoles had not yet been banned, digital copyrights were not popularized, and physical channels were extremely scarce. At that time, poor students could only rely on pirated discs on the street and cracked game forums to access and play the latest stand-alone games. I am no exception.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Game Streaming and China's Copyright Tug-of-War"},{"content":"On June 19, Sony PlayStation’s first-party masterpiece “The Last of Us”, once regarded as a masterpiece by many players, finally unlocked its sequel. However, despite the fact that many game media had previously given \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; very high praise,** only the second day after the game was released, its score on Metacritic was brushed to a low score of 3.8 by players**. The polarizing evaluations of \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; by the media and players have pushed this AAA masterpiece, which was supposed to be a strong contender for the 2020 Game of the Year, to the forefront.\nThe main reason why players are so disappointed and even angry about \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; is the game\u0026rsquo;s script. As the male protagonist of the previous generation and the most important controllable character in the previous generation, Joel got the benefit of the doubt in the prologue of this game. Just imagine, a game character with whom you have spent dozens of hours, a tough guy father who was portrayed extremely plump in the previous generation story, was brutally murdered by a woman you didn\u0026rsquo;t know at all with a golf club in less than 2 hours after the game started. And just ten minutes before this woman tortured Joel, she was saved by Joel from a group of zombies. This is truly a textbook-level \u0026ldquo;Farmer and Snake\u0026rdquo; story.\nAfter that, the heroine Ellie and her little girlfriend embarked on the long road of \u0026ldquo;avenging their father\u0026rdquo;. Do you think this is over? Do you think the next story is about how the heroine overcame all kinds of difficulties and dangers, finally came to Seattle, killed her enemies with her own hands, and then left in style, living a life of poverty and determination in the apocalypse? You are still too simple! The most disgusting thing about the script of this game is that it not only forces you to accept the fact that the protagonist of the previous generation was killed at the beginning, but also forces you to personally control the woman who will take revenge on Jorn, forcing you to experience her mental journey. In the end, when Ellie finally went through all kinds of hardships and came to the enemy who killed her father, after a fierce hand-to-hand fight, Ellie actually let her go! Yes, when I watched the boat of the enemy who killed my father slowly sailing away, and Ellie was crying alone in the water, I almost dropped the controller.\nA AAA game that has also experienced this kind of \u0026ldquo;player\u0026rsquo;s Waterloo\u0026rdquo; experience is the famous FPS game \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo; released by EA in 2018. Compared with the situation of \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; that failed immediately after its release, \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo; is much worse. Its first trailer before the official release of the game has already caused an uproar among players. Criticisms of this promotional video mainly came from traditional players of the \u0026ldquo;Battlefield\u0026rdquo; series, namely the majority of first-person shooter game fans. They believe that the images in the \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo; promotional video are seriously out of touch with the real history of World War II. Whether it is a female soldier with mechanical prosthetics or a game scene that does not belong to any classic World War II battle, most players have doubted whether this is a game about World War II.\nThe response of Patrick Soderlund, CEO of DICE Studio and Chief Design Officer of EA, who is responsible for the development of \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo;, when faced with players\u0026rsquo; questions caused even more widespread anger and dissatisfaction. He said in an interview: \u0026ldquo;These people lack education, and they don\u0026rsquo;t know that this is a reasonable scenario.\u0026rdquo; He also said: \u0026ldquo;Players have only two choices about this matter: either accept this setting, or don\u0026rsquo;t buy our game.\u0026rdquo; You know, uneducated is a very ugly word in English. Many core players of the \u0026ldquo;Battlefield\u0026rdquo; series were completely offended, and their anger caused \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo; to cool down before it was released.Whether it is the polarization in the evaluation of \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; by the media and players, or the debate between authors and players about \u0026ldquo;Battlefield 5\u0026rdquo;, they all reflect a fundamental contradiction in video games, that is, the contradiction between artworks and commodities. Many people like to call video games the \u0026ldquo;ninth art\u0026rdquo; because games, like movies, can use various techniques to express certain points of view or tell certain stories, thereby arousing emotional reactions from the audience or players. But just like movies rely on box office to make profits, the essence of games is just products used by manufacturers to make profits. Once something has the dual missions of artistic expression and commercial profit, it will inevitably fall into the contradiction between art and commodities.\nThe construction of artwork is highly personal. It is more of a private expression of the values, aesthetics and techniques of the individual author or the creative team. Since it is a private expression, it will naturally arouse the approval of some people and the disapproval of others. But in the field of pure art, there is an unequal relationship between the expresser and the appreciator, that is, the expresser does not need to care about the appreciator\u0026rsquo;s feelings, he just expresses himself to his heart\u0026rsquo;s content. In this sense, artists should be proud.\nHowever, on the other hand, the construction of high-end products is highly public. Only by catering to its own audience as much as possible can it maximize commercial interests. Therefore, businessmen often do not care about what they want to express, but more about what the audience wants. Because in the commercial field, producers and consumers are in a relatively equal relationship, and only when they reach a consensus can economic benefits be generated. If a product is not recognized by the market, it is a failure and there is no room for maneuver.\nCommercial movies and video games happen to straddle the two fields of art and commerce. Since their birth, they have struggled between self-expression and public demand, seeking to survive in the constant tug of war between the two parties. The production team of \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; may indeed have great ideas. They want the game to go beyond the scope of a commodity and carry some noble values. But this is obviously not to the players\u0026rsquo; liking. As a Sony first-party game team with a heavy responsibility, Naughty Dog should not act like a condescension and forcefully instill its own values ​​​​into players without considering the players\u0026rsquo; feelings at all. Doing so is neither commercially logical nor will it cast an unknowable shadow on the future development of the studio.\nAfter all, \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us\u0026rdquo; is not an independent game for self-entertainment, nor is it a work of art placed in a game museum for future generations to admire. It is a real commodity. It was born with only one purpose, and that is to make money**. Of course, it is better to be able to express yourself while making profits, but when the two conflict and it is obvious that you can only choose one of them, as a manufacturer with investor money, you can only choose the logic of business, not the logic of art. This may not sound romantic, but it is the basic way our society works.\nI still remember the beautiful scene of Joel and Ellie riding horses and walking past the giraffe. Naughty Dog is a studio that has brought us so many wonderful memories. I hope they can learn from this lesson and make more popular and popular games in the future.\nMy name is Gu Yue. Thank you for listening to \u0026ldquo;Ge Wu Zhi\u0026rdquo;. I will try my best to learn more about history and society in this program. If you like this episode, don’t forget to subscribe to my channel, give my video a like, and leave your thoughts in the comment area. See you next time.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200622/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn June 19, Sony PlayStation’s first-party masterpiece “The Last of Us”, once regarded as a masterpiece by many players, finally unlocked its sequel. However, despite the fact that many game media had previously given \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; very high praise,** only the second day after the game was released, its score on Metacritic was brushed to a low score of 3.8 by players**. The polarizing evaluations of \u0026ldquo;The Last of Us 2\u0026rdquo; by the media and players have pushed this AAA masterpiece, which was supposed to be a strong contender for the 2020 Game of the Year, to the forefront.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Criticized 'The Last of Us Part 2': The Contradiction between Self-Expression and Public Demand"},{"content":"Recently, the incident of a primary school student falling from a building in Jintan District, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province spread throughout the Chinese Internet. In fact, I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want to devote a special episode to discussing this matter. After all, the little girl just left not long ago, so it is really not good to bring this matter out to make it a hot topic and attract traffic. But then I thought about it, the dead are gone, but the living are working hard. It is time for those of us who have experienced Miao Kexin\u0026rsquo;s feelings to some extent to stand up and discuss how to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.\nI mainly want to discuss two issues today. First of all, regarding the issue of \u0026ldquo;transmitting positive energy\u0026rdquo; that many people are criticizing, my personal views on this may be different from the mainstream views. Maybe for us adults, blindly \u0026ldquo;delivering positive energy\u0026rdquo; is indeed a kind of self-paralyzing spiritual opium. It only whitewashes the peace and is not helpful in solving any real problems. But for children like Miao Kexin, who is about ten years old, under normal circumstances, should we focus on \u0026ldquo;delivering positive energy\u0026rdquo;? At least in my personal opinion, it is an extremely cruel thing to let a child of around ten years old know the complexity and ugliness of the adult world in advance. So** in a normal society, no matter how intense the intrigue among adults is, we should strive to let the next generation grow up in an environment full of kindness and warmth**. This is why I support “passing positive energy” to children.\nHowever, what I said above can only be established in a normal and ideal society. In our current social reality, people like Miao Kexin\u0026rsquo;s generation have lived in cram schools, exams and competitions of all sizes since childhood. The cruel competition and huge pressure they face may be something that even us adults cannot understand. In such an environment, children have actually entered adulthood early. For them, there is no such thing as a warm and innocent childhood. This is why Miao Kexin was able to write an article like \u0026ldquo;Three Strikes of White Bone Demons\u0026rdquo;. Because it’s not that they don’t want to “deliver positive energy”, but that from a very young age, they have already tasted the bitterness of the adult world that should only belong to adults. In this case, your teacher still insists on asking the children to \u0026ldquo;deliver positive energy\u0026rdquo;. This is not forcing the children to lie, what is it?\nIn the final analysis, when it comes to \u0026ldquo;positive energy\u0026rdquo;, it is not the children who are wrong, but the entire society. It was the incompetence of us adults, our failure to do our part, and our failure to create a childhood world full of innocence and warmth for our next generation, that ultimately led to such a tragedy.\nThe second question I want to discuss today is about the role that teachers, as a group, play in the growth of each of us. I think many of you are like me and have experienced inhumane treatment by your head teacher or classroom teacher. I don’t know about first-tier developed areas like Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou. I grew up in a shantytown in a third-tier city. I experienced corporal punishment and beatings when I was in kindergarten. At that time, I was young and full of energy, so I always couldn\u0026rsquo;t sleep during lunch break, so the teacher asked us, who were not sleeping, to do squats in the corner. I was only 5 years old at that time. It got even worse when I was in elementary school. Those who didn\u0026rsquo;t turn in their homework would be queued up and slapped on the back of their hands. Note, it\u0026rsquo;s not the palm of your hand, but the back of your hand. Our teacher said personally that the back of the hand hurts more than the hand, and he wanted us to \u0026ldquo;long memory\u0026rdquo;. As for the verbal insults and abuses, there are countless. If you fail to answer a question in class, you will be said to have \u0026ldquo;granite in your head.\u0026rdquo; If you repeatedly get the same question wrong, you will be said to be \u0026ldquo;mentally retarded,\u0026rdquo; \u0026ldquo;incurable,\u0026rdquo; and so on. Students whose families do not give them red envelopes will be placed in the row behind the teacher, and class cadres will give them to students whose families have money and are willing to give them red envelopes.I won’t continue to list them here. What I want to say today is that no matter which country you are in, teachers are an inherently authoritarian profession. Because they are facing a group of children who are absolutely disadvantaged, they hold huge power** in their hands over the students. We all say that the power of the government and the state should be restricted, but should teachers’ power over students also be supervised and restricted? If you have ever joined the so-called class group or parent group, you should have experienced that parents nowadays are even more humble in front of teachers than in front of unit leaders. What are the reasons that led to today\u0026rsquo;s situation? I think this issue is worthy of reflection by all of us.\nIt has been some time since Miao Kexin passed away. I would like to end today’s program by quoting John Donne’s sermon:\nNo one is self-contained, An isolated island, Everyone is part of a vast continent. If a wave washes away a rock, Europe will decrease. Like a promontory that loses its tip, Like losing a piece of your friend\u0026rsquo;s or your own territory. Every death is my sorrow, Because I am a member of the human race. So, Ask not for whom the bell tolls, It chirps for you!\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200617/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eRecently, the incident of a primary school student falling from a building in Jintan District, Changzhou, Jiangsu Province spread throughout the Chinese Internet. In fact, I didn\u0026rsquo;t really want to devote a special episode to discussing this matter. After all, the little girl just left not long ago, so it is really not good to bring this matter out to make it a hot topic and attract traffic. But then I thought about it, the dead are gone, but the living are working hard. It is time for those of us who have experienced Miao Kexin\u0026rsquo;s feelings to some extent to stand up and discuss how to prevent similar tragedies from happening again.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Miao Kexin’s tragedy is our common tragedy"},{"content":"Many people born in the new era may not understand that just a few decades ago, our country would still divide people into \u0026ldquo;left\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; people. The \u0026ldquo;left and right\u0026rdquo; mentioned here is a political indicator, which is widely used to divide everyone\u0026rsquo;s political tendency. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly included royal nobles, religious figures, emerging capitalists and urban craftsmen. The former sits on the right side of the parliament hall and supports the monarchy and the Catholic Church; while the latter sits on the left side of the hall and supports the republic and opposes the dictatorship of the church. From then on, in politics, those who advocated maintaining the current system and opposed radical reforms or revolutions were called \u0026ldquo;rightists\u0026rdquo;; while those who advocated breaking the current system and supporting radical reforms or even revolutions were called \u0026ldquo;leftists\u0026rdquo;.\nWhen we face these 24-word core values, we may not realize that \u0026ldquo;freedom\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;equality\u0026rdquo; are actually a pair of contradictory concepts. Because in a free competitive market, inequality will inevitably arise due to differences in background, family education, social opportunities and other aspects between people. And this kind of inequality will continue to intensify over time. This is the so-called \u0026ldquo;Matthew effect.\u0026rdquo; And if we want to artificially suppress this natural trend of inequality and promote the formation of a situation of \u0026ldquo;equality for everyone,\u0026rdquo; we must restrict the freedom of society as a whole. Although this does not mean that a society can never balance freedom and equality, there is indeed an inherent contradiction between these two values.\nTherefore, in the pair of contradictory values ​​​​of freedom and equality, those who believe that freedom is higher than equality can be generally classified as right-wing; and those who believe that equality is higher than freedom can be roughly classified as left-wing**. For example, on a one-dimensional coordinate axis from left to right, Obama, who promotes \u0026ldquo;Medicare for All,\u0026rdquo; will definitely be to the left of Trump, who announced the repeal of the bill as soon as he took office.\nAfter entering the 20th century, with the rapid development of modern economics, the traditional one-dimensional coordinate axis can no longer accurately reflect people\u0026rsquo;s political stance. For example, people usually place Stalin on the left end of the axis and Hitler on the right end. However, the two men are very similar in their views on many policies. This reflects the shortcomings of the traditional one-dimensional political coordinate system. Because it is entirely possible for a person to be on the left economically but on the right politically. Stalin is a good example. He and Hitler were both far right politically, and the main difference between the two was economic.\nIn order to make up for the shortcomings of the traditional one-dimensional coordinate axis, people introduced a longitudinal coordinate axis, extending the political coordinate system to two dimensions. In this two-dimensional coordinate system, the horizontal axis represents the economy and the vertical axis represents politics. The left side of the horizontal axis represents economic egalitarianism, advocating the redistribution of social wealth through state intervention to narrow the gap between rich and poor in society as a whole; the right side represents economic liberalism, believing that a free competitive market is the solution to most problems, and opposing excessive state intervention in the economy. Preliminary; the upper part of the vertical axis represents political authoritarianism, which advocates the use of stricter legal systems to restrict the behavior of individuals and enterprises, and puts the interests of the country above all else; the lower part represents political liberalism, which advocates that individual value is the ultimate goal, and the state is only a means to realize personal value.In the two-dimensional political spectrum, everyone will have a point consisting of an abscissa and an ordinate. The closer this point is to which direction, the stronger the person\u0026rsquo;s identification with which doctrine is. In this way, Comrade Stalin found his rightful position, that is, the extreme left economically and the extreme right politically; while the head of state is here, the economic center is right and the political extreme right. From this picture, we can easily see that it is actually inaccurate to blindly judge the head of state as \u0026ldquo;extreme right\u0026rdquo;.\nThis two-dimensional political coordinate system is often called the \u0026ldquo;political spectrum\u0026rdquo;. It is a quantitative tool in political science used to scale everyone\u0026rsquo;s tendency in political and economic positions. Nowadays, you only need to take ten minutes and take a test questionnaire to roughly find your position in this coordinate system and which historical celebrities will be your close friends.\nHistorically, there have been several interesting phenomena regarding the political spectrum. As we all know, the Democratic and Republican parties in the United States today bring together elites from all walks of life on the left and right of the country respectively, that is, the Democratic Party is on the left and the Republican Party is on the right. But this situation was exactly the opposite a hundred years ago. When it was first established, the Democratic Party was actually a conservative right-wing party that mainly represented the interests of American farmers. Therefore, the Democratic Party passed a bill in the mid-19th century to forcibly expel Indians, launched the Mexican-American War, and obtained large amounts of land for farming. During the Civil War, they supported slavery to maintain the established agricultural system. For a long time, the Democratic Party gained support from southern states. However, since the 1930s, President Roosevelt Jr., as the candidate of the Democratic Party, implemented the \u0026ldquo;New Deal\u0026rdquo; to restore the U.S. economy after the Great Depression. These practices, which seemed very left-leaning at the time, became the main policy direction of the Democratic Party in the future. As a result, the Democratic Party gradually changed from a conservative right-wing party to a radical left-wing party until today.\nWhen it was first established, today\u0026rsquo;s Republican Party was a left-wing party that advocated economic reform and opposed slavery. The first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, and his taking office was the direct cause of the outbreak of the Civil War. It was not until President Reagan took office in the 1980s that the political stance of the modern Republican Party was finally finalized. But a hundred years later, the Republican Party has transformed into a conservative right-wing party representing whites, men, middle-aged and older people, farmers and people with low education. In other words, over the past hundred years or so, the positions of the two major political parties in the United States have had interesting exchanges. This also reflects some of the essence of modern capitalist party politics.\nThere is another interesting phenomenon. Whenever we think of the Nazis these days, we automatically categorize them as being on the far right. But if we take a look at the full name of the Nazis - the National Socialist German Workers\u0026rsquo; Party, we will be surprised to find that it was also a left-wing party representing the interests of workers at the beginning. As for the history of the Nazis, and how Hitler transformed from an unknown Austrian art student to a head of state with blood on his hands, that is another story.\nThis episode of our program mainly introduces some common sense about political science. If you are still interested in this type of topic, you can search for relevant information and read it yourself.\nMy name is Gu Yue. Thank you for listening to \u0026ldquo;Gewu Zhi\u0026rdquo;. I will do my best to clarify history and society in this program. If you like this episode, please subscribe to my channel, give me a like, and leave your thoughts in the comment area. See you next time.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200616/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eMany people born in the new era may not understand that just a few decades ago, our country would still divide people into \u0026ldquo;left\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;right\u0026rdquo; people. \u003cstrong\u003eThe \u0026ldquo;left and right\u0026rdquo; mentioned here is a political indicator, which is widely used to divide everyone\u0026rsquo;s political tendency\u003c/strong\u003e. During the French Revolution, the National Assembly included royal nobles, religious figures, emerging capitalists and urban craftsmen. The former sits on the right side of the parliament hall and supports the monarchy and the Catholic Church; while the latter sits on the left side of the hall and supports the republic and opposes the dictatorship of the church. \u003cstrong\u003eFrom then on, in politics, those who advocated maintaining the current system and opposed radical reforms or revolutions were called \u0026ldquo;rightists\u0026rdquo;; while those who advocated breaking the current system and supporting radical reforms or even revolutions were called \u0026ldquo;leftists\u0026rdquo;\u003c/strong\u003e.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Understanding the Political Spectrum in Ten Minutes"},{"content":"#The causes and consequences of the Floyd incident\nOn May 25, 2020, in Minnesota, the United States, an African American named George Floyd was negligently killed by a local white police officer during his arrest. This incident became the trigger for a nationwide riot, with large and small protests breaking out in various states across the United States. These protests have developed from initially peaceful demonstrations to violent incidents of smashing, looting, and burning. There have been vicious incidents in various places where shops were smashed and looted by thugs.\nThe story begins with the \u0026ldquo;Floyd incident\u0026rdquo; 20 days ago. At 8 pm on May 25, in Minneapolis, the capital of Minnesota in the northern United States (yes, the place where Dong Ge was exposed as a \u0026ldquo;sexual assault scandal\u0026rdquo;), a convenience store clerk dialed 911. According to call records released by the police, the clerk said when calling the police that an African-American man used counterfeit money when checking out in the store, but he was discovered by the clerk. The clerk asked him to return the cigarettes he purchased, but he refused.\nThe African American who used counterfeit money is the protagonist of the story-George Floyd. He was born in Texas, USA, and is 46 years old. In 2009, 11 years ago, Floyd was sentenced to prison for armed robbery and served 5 years in a Texas prison. After he was released from prison, he moved to Minnesota and worked as a security guard at a Minneapolis restaurant for five years. Until recently, I lost my job due to the COVID-19 pandemic.\nAfter receiving the alarm, the local police rushed to the scene quickly. When police arrived, Floyd was still near the convenience store where the incident occurred. According to the description of the clerk who called the police, Floyd was \u0026ldquo;drunk and unconscious\u0026rdquo; at the time and was sitting in his car. The police body camera shows that in addition to Floyd, there were two other people sitting in the car at the time, a man and a woman. A police officer pointed a gun at Floyd and ordered him to put his hands on the steering wheel, and Floyd complied. Afterwards, another police officer at the scene pulled Floyd out of the car and handcuffed him. During this period, Floyd resisted several times. Afterwards, Floyd sat on the side of the road. The police briefly questioned him and told him that he was arrested for using counterfeit money.\nThe next scene was filmed by passers-by on their mobile phones: Floyd suddenly fell down while being led to the police car by the police, and said he had claustrophobia. At this time, the other protagonist in this case, the 44-year-old white police officer Derek Michael Chauvin, arrived at the scene in another police car. According to the prosecutor\u0026rsquo;s subsequent indictment against Chauvin, four police officers tried several times to put Floyd into the back seat of a police car, but Floyd deliberately fell down, stood crookedly, and kept saying he couldn\u0026rsquo;t breathe. Chauvin then pulled Floyd into a police car with the help of two colleagues.At 8:19 p.m., Chauvin pulled Floyd out of the right back seat of the police car. Three police officers pushed him to the ground at the same time. Chauvin put his left knee on Floyd\u0026rsquo;s neck. Colleagues around him once asked whether Floyd should be turned over, but Chauvin refused. In this way, Chauvin pressed his knee on Floyd\u0026rsquo;s neck for several minutes. The law enforcement recorder shows that Floyd was struggling and calling for help during this period, but Xiao Wan ignored it. According to the complaint, Chauvin knelt on Floyd\u0026rsquo;s neck for a total of 8 minutes and 46 seconds. After Floyd became unresponsive, he continued for 2 minutes and 53 seconds, and did not remove his knee until 8:27. After the ambulance arrived, police put Floyd on a stretcher. Unfortunately, the rescue was not successful, and at 9:25 that night, the hospital announced Floyd\u0026rsquo;s death.\nBecause Xiao Wan behaved extremely coldly in this incident, and the entire incident was filmed by onlookers on their mobile phones, the incident quickly spread on social media. On May 26, the day after Floyd’s death, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets, clashing with the police and turning into nationwide riots. In addition to the United States, protests have also swept across other countries such as the United Kingdom, France, Australia, and New Zealand. People carried signs saying \u0026ldquo;I can\u0026rsquo;t breathe\u0026rdquo; to express their sympathy for Floyd and their dissatisfaction with issues such as racial discrimination and police brutality that have been rooted in the United States for many years.\nAlthough the riots are also related to the nationwide unemployment wave caused by the new crown epidemic and the presidential campaigns of the two parties, the problem of racial discrimination is indeed a chronic disease in American society. To understand why the United States has such severe racial problems, we must start with the colonial history before American independence.\n#America’s Tradition of Racial Discrimination\nIn 1492, when Columbus\u0026rsquo;s fleet first arrived on the North American continent, racial conflicts on this land had already begun. Conflict first broke out between European colonists and Native Americans. Due to the huge disparity in technological levels and physical conditions between the two sides, the vast majority of the indigenous people in North America were either killed by Europeans, died of diseases brought by Europeans, or were driven away from the land where they lived in their own time. This is also one of the \u0026ldquo;black histories\u0026rdquo; of the United States that many people talk about.\nHowever, what we call racial discrimination in the United States today actually does not refer to the discrimination of Europeans against indigenous peoples, but the discrimination of white people against people of color. The people of color here are actually just like white people, they are also foreign ethnic groups. The time they arrived in North America was different from that of white Europeans, that is, the front and rear feet. Besides skin color and culture, the only difference between these races is the order of immigration. Here is an idea. If the first colonists arriving in North America were not white Europeans, but yellow people from East Asia, then the order of racial discrimination in the United States today might be reversed. Of course, there are no what-ifs in history. My purpose in making this analogy is just to let you understand the nature of racial discrimination in the United States.\nAlthough other people of color, including Chinese, are also victims of racial discrimination in the United States, we have to admit that the main and most acute targets of racial discrimination in the United States are black people, what we call African Americans, such as this one. If you come to the United States in the future, it is best not to habitually call these people \u0026ldquo;Black\u0026rdquo;, but strictly call them \u0026ldquo;African American\u0026rdquo;, otherwise you may be mercilessly attacked by the iron fist of \u0026ldquo;political correctness\u0026rdquo;.Unlike other ethnic groups who actively immigrated to the North American continent, the ancestors of the vast majority of African Americans today immigrated to the Americas passively. While the Europeans were busy opening up new routes, the African continent was still in a state of fragmentation. Tribes or ethnic groups often engage in life-and-death struggles. This was precisely exploited by the Europeans, who usually took an empty ship to Africa and spent a small amount of money to buy some slaves from some local tribes and stuff them into the cabin. These slaves were usually prisoners of the losing side in tribal wars. Europeans transported black slaves to the \u0026ldquo;New World\u0026rdquo; by ship, in exchange for a shipload of agricultural and sideline products from the \u0026ldquo;New World\u0026rdquo; (such as tea, coffee, or tobacco), and then shipped these products back to Europe and sold them at high prices. This is a complete closed loop of trade, which is the \u0026ldquo;triangular trade\u0026rdquo; mentioned in our middle school history books.\nThe reason why the \u0026ldquo;triangular trade\u0026rdquo; was established was that the early economic model of the North American colonies was highly dependent on labor. Industries such as crop cultivation and agricultural and sideline product processing require a large amount of labor. Since the number of European immigrants was small and their wages were high, black slaves transported from Africa became the only choice for colonial plantation owners. After all, they are strong, eat less, and are cheap. The key is a one-time investment. As a means of production, they are extremely cost-effective.\nThis is a good explanation of why there is such a serious problem of racial discrimination in the United States. Because for those colonial planters and their descendants, black people were not human beings, but just working machines that they paid for and part of the means of production for the estate\u0026rsquo;s economy. Do you feel empathy for the computers in your company’s office? Of course not. Then you might say, after all, black slaves are not machines. At least they don\u0026rsquo;t look much different from us. We are all human beings. Why are those manor owners so cruel? Of course these issues are valid today, but in ancient times hundreds of years ago, China\u0026rsquo;s senior officials at the provincial and ministerial levels would be beaten to death with wooden sticks by eunuchs. Times are different, and of course people’s concepts and the level of civilization in society are also different.\nThis manorial economy of intensive agricultural production based on slaveholding existed until the 19th century. Especially in the southern states with developed agriculture, the manor economy has become a pillar industry almost everywhere. In our current terms, the South of the United States was a \u0026ldquo;large rural area\u0026rdquo; at that time. Opposite to the \u0026ldquo;large rural areas\u0026rdquo; in the south is the rising urban industry in the north. From ancient times to the present, cities have always been the areas where advanced ideas first sprouted and spread. Therefore, in the 19th century North of the United States, cruel slavery had almost become a \u0026ldquo;street rat\u0026rdquo;. This was an ideological aspect. On the economic side, the North also had reasons to oppose slavery. As we all know, urban industry and plantation agriculture have one thing in common, that is, they both have a huge demand for labor. The northerners were definitely not willing to use slave labor like the south, so they began to advocate the liberation of black slaves, because once the black slaves in the south were released, northern factories would receive a large amount of cheap labor.In this way, at that time, the northern states of the United States became increasingly wealthy through the development of modern industry, and at the same time they always criticized slavery in the South from the moral high ground. In this way, the economic and ideological gap between the North and the South grew wider. You know, at the beginning of the founding of the United States, the North and the South had differences on the organizational form of the federal government. At that time, the South favored conservative liberalism and advocated the establishment of a \u0026ldquo;small government\u0026rdquo; to minimize government interference in private rights; while the North favored radical federalism and advocated the establishment of a \u0026ldquo;big government\u0026rdquo; to better safeguard the well-being of the people. In the eyes of southerners, northerners are just a group of upstarts who regard themselves as aloof. They were not satisfied with the content of the Constitution in the first place, and now they even want to fly away.\nIn 1860, the newly formed Republican Party won a majority in the general election, and its candidate Abraham Lincoln was also successfully elected president. The South completely lost its voice in the new federal government. As a result, seven states known as the \u0026ldquo;Deep South\u0026rdquo; declared their separation from the Union of America and formed their own Confederate States of America. The Civil War was about to break out.\nAlthough the reasons that led to the outbreak of the Civil War are extremely complicated, it is undeniable that the debate about the liberation of black slaves was the direct cause of the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the war ultimately ended in victory for the North, the black slaves on the southern plantations were finally liberated. But both the South and the North paid a heavy price for this. It can be said that the black civil rights movement in the 1960s and the current nationwide riots had their roots laid as early as the Civil War era. The century-long history of racial discrimination in the United States does not end here. Although black people have obtained the same rights as other races at the national level, systemic discrimination still exists and continues to this day.\nMy program today is mainly about the origins of racial discrimination in the United States. With the progress of the times, the specific situations and methods of discrimination are constantly changing in one way or another. The United States has never been able to escape the shadow of racial discrimination and its derivative problems. From today\u0026rsquo;s national riots to the Civil War, they are all inextricably linked to racial issues. As for how the racial issue evolves and agitates, until it triggers riots again and again, and how black people rise up to resist in this process, that is the content of our subsequent program.\nFollow-up After listening to the above, many people may start to criticize the United States as \u0026ldquo;rotten capitalism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the American people live in water and fire\u0026rdquo; and use these clichés. But what I want to say is that you may only see one side of the matter and ignore (or selectively ignore) the other side of the matter.\nThe political system of the United States has been operating relatively smoothly for more than two hundred years. Over the past two hundred years, Americans have constantly stepped on pitfalls, corrected them, and stepped on them again. Their political system has also been continuously polished and improved in the process, and they have many error-correction mechanisms that other countries do not have. On May 26, the Minneapolis Police Department announced the suspension of the officers involved; on May 27, the FBI began an investigation into the Floyd incident; on May 29, Derek Chauvin was arrested by the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Investigation; on June 3, Derek Chauvin was formally charged with second-degree murder. The trial is still continuing.In the past 20 days, some police officers across the United States have knelt down to express support for the peaceful demonstration movement. I have also mentioned before that George Floyd is actually a \u0026ldquo;social delinquent\u0026rdquo; with multiple criminal records, and his behavior of using counterfeit money is indeed a crime in the United States. However, these are not enough to whitewash police brutality, nor are they enough to erase the fact that serious racial discrimination still exists in the United States. The vast majority of those who took to the streets to protest peacefully did not want to defend a criminal. What they wanted was to change the current situation of serious police brutality and racial discrimination in the United States.\nI am Gu Yue, thank you for watching \u0026ldquo;Ge Wu Zhi\u0026rdquo;, I will do my best to clarify history and society in this program. If you think this video is interesting, please give me a like or leave your own thoughts in the comment area. See you next time.\n#Video material- CBS Evening News - Derek Chauvin charged with third degree murder in death of George Floyd\nCBS Evening News - New video shows Minneapolis police arrest of George Floyd before death CBS News - 4 Minneapolis officers fired after arrest of man who later died CNBC Television - Scenes from protests, riots across the U.S. after killing of George Floyd Sky News Australia - The Left has tried to define deadly US riots as ‘peaceful’ protests The New York Times - How George Floyd was killed in police custody_visual Investigations The New York Times - Thousands March to the White House _ George Floyd Protests TODAY - 4 Minneapolis Officers Fired After Death Of George Floyd In Police Custody VICE News - Cops Are Taking a Knee. Not Everyone Is Convinced VICE News - George Floyd Protests Around the World Are Calling for Racial Justice Ming Dynasty1566.EP01.2007 act.tv - Systemic Racism Explained CCTV Records - \u0026ldquo;The Turning Point of History: The Voyage to the West\u0026rdquo; Episode 1 - Dreaming of the Ming Dynasty Mrs. Martinez - life of a plantation slave Newsy - Remembering Chinese railroad workers Shotgun BomBom - French Defensive from American Natives Attack Anthony Hazard - The Atlantic slave trade What too few textbooks told you Vox - Why the US celebrates Columbus Day WatchMojo.com - History of the Civil Rights Movement Yesterday Today - 43 Haunting Photos Of The American Civil War mixkit-highway-between-trees-506 mixkit-traffic-in-an-underground-tunnel-4067 FreeSchool - The Statue of Liberty for Kids Famous World Landmarks for Children ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200613/","summary":"\u003cp\u003e#The causes and consequences of the Floyd incident\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn May 25, 2020, in Minnesota, the United States, an African American named George Floyd was negligently killed by a local white police officer during his arrest. This incident became the trigger for a nationwide riot, with large and small protests breaking out in various states across the United States. These protests have developed from initially peaceful demonstrations to violent incidents of smashing, looting, and burning. There have been vicious incidents in various places where shops were smashed and looted by thugs.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The Floyd Incident and America’s Tradition of Racial Discrimination"},{"content":"Anyone who reads e-books frequently and has used a Kindle must have experienced the pain of organizing e-books. Especially for people like me who often download e-book files and then import them to Kindle for reading (either to save money or because there are no books we want to read in the Kindle store), there is a lack of an effective management solution for those complicated e-books with different titles, authors, covers, and file formats to fully manage their reading progress and time.\nFor a long time, Calibre on PC and Mac has been a unsatisfactory e-book management solution. It not only supports multiple platforms and has powerful functions (supporting e-book organization, editing, format conversion, one-click push to Kindle, etc.), but it is also completely free. So why do I describe such a powerful software as \u0026ldquo;unsatisfactory\u0026rdquo;? Because Calibre has not had major functional updates for many years, as an e-book management software, it can no longer adapt to the needs that people are accustomed to today. Specifically, Calibre has the following disadvantages:\nThe interface is old (or primitive?) and looks like software from ten years ago; The startup and operation speed are slow and the operation is cumbersome; Does not support multi-device synchronization and does not provide cloud storage services (this is the most important point). For people like me who are busy studying or working and rarely use the same terminal device for a fixed period of time, multi-terminal synchronization and cloud storage are almost indispensable functions. And today, as web programs and WeChat applets become increasingly popular, sometimes even downloading a specialized application seems cumbersome (perhaps because of the technological advancements in recent years). Therefore, it is best to have an e-book management server application similar to Plex Movie and TV Library, which allows me to manage and read my own e-books anytime and anywhere by opening a web page. Fortunately, such software does exist, and it is Calibre\u0026rsquo;s successor - Calibre Web .\nThe picture below is a personal e-book management website (or personal electronic library?) that I built on my NAS using Calibre Web. Through this website, I can easily upload, modify, organize, and push e-books in various formats on various terminal devices. Since it is a web version, I don’t have to worry about massive e-books taking up the hard drive capacity of my phone or computer, nor do I have to worry about multi-end synchronization. What\u0026rsquo;s even more commendable is that because Calibre Web was developed relatively recently, its interface is also in line with the current mainstream aesthetic standards. Regarding how to build Calibre Web, there are many tutorials written by seniors on the Internet, and they have explained it in great detail. First of all, you must have a server or NAS that can run stably (in fact, any ordinary computer will do, as long as you are willing to let it run 24/7). Then, you need to set up a docker environment on your device, because Calibre Web requires docker as a running carrier. Finally, after simple installation and configuration, you can have your own e-book management website.\nHere we take Synology as an example. First create a new shared folder in the \u0026ldquo;Control Panel\u0026rdquo; to store Calibre Web\u0026rsquo;s database and e-book resources. I\u0026rsquo;ll name it \u0026ldquo;Books\u0026rdquo; here. After creation, remember to open the folder to read and write permissions for all users, otherwise Calibre Web will not function properly. After the shared folder configuration is completed, choose to install docker in Synology\u0026rsquo;s package center and open it. Then search for \u0026ldquo;Calibre-web\u0026rdquo; in the \u0026ldquo;Registry\u0026rdquo; page. The three images selected in the box here can all be downloaded. There is not much difference between them. Here we mainly recommend linuxserver/calibre-web. In the dialog box that pops up after double-clicking, select \u0026ldquo;latest\u0026rdquo; and click \u0026ldquo;OK\u0026rdquo; to start the download. After the image is downloaded successfully (a prompt will pop up in the upper right corner of the system), enter the \u0026ldquo;Image\u0026rdquo; page of docker, select the linuxserver/calibre-web image you just downloaded, and click to start. In the pop-up dialog box, click \u0026ldquo;Advanced Settings\u0026rdquo; and then make settings as shown below. After that, start Calibre Web and enter Synology’s intranet IP address + half-width colon + the port number set in the picture above (default is 8083) in the browser address bar. For example, my intranet IP address of Synology is 10.10.10.34, and the port number of Calibre Web is 3096, then the address I enter is: http:10.10.10.34:3096 When entering Calibre Web for the first time, you need to perform some simple configurations, such as specifying the database directory (must match the \u0026ldquo;load path\u0026rdquo; set in the picture above), creating a user, and configuring email push. Regarding the configuration and use of Calibre Web, I won’t go into details here. There are a lot of online tutorials. By the way, if you want to continue using Calibre Web in a non-home intranet environment (such as a 4G network when traveling), you also need to configure intranet penetration or dynamic DDNS. As for these contents, they are beyond the scope of today’s article. We will have the opportunity to talk about them in the future.\nFinally, I would like to recommend a book I am reading recently - \u0026ldquo;Once Upon a Time in Budapest\u0026rdquo; from the Utopia Translation Series. I hope you will like it. ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200512/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAnyone who reads e-books frequently and has used a Kindle must have experienced the pain of organizing e-books. Especially for people like me who often download e-book files and then import them to Kindle for reading (either to save money or because there are no books we want to read in the Kindle store), there is a lack of an effective management solution for those complicated e-books with different titles, authors, covers, and file formats to fully manage their reading progress and time.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Building a Personal Online Library with NAS, Docker, and Calibre Web"},{"content":"For quite a few people, including me, memorizing words has almost become a necessity. Whether it is to prepare for exams, obtain various levels of certificates, or simply improve language skills, vocabulary is a challenge that we have to face head-on. In today\u0026rsquo;s Internet age, the method of memorizing heavy vocabulary books or dictionaries has been abandoned by most people, because it is boring and inefficient. It not only kills our enthusiasm for learning a language, but is also not conducive to cultivating a sense of language and putting it into practical use.\nIn this context, a number of \u0026ldquo;vocabulary memorization\u0026rdquo; software came into being. These include Kaixin Ci Chang (https://cichang.hujiang.com/ \u0026ldquo;Xichang Ci Chang Official Website\u0026rdquo;), [Scallop English] (https://www.shanbay.com/ \u0026ldquo;Scallop English Official Website\u0026rdquo;) and [Baicizhan] (https://www.baicizhan.com/ \u0026ldquo;Baicizhan Official Website\u0026rdquo;) and other relatively excellent products. However, these software more or less have the following irreparable flaws:\nThesauruses are mostly pre-made by manufacturers and lack room for customization according to personal circumstances, and are not very flexible. Most of the supported languages ​​are English, Japanese, Korean and other popular languages, which cannot meet the needs of learners of minor languages ​​(such as Hebrew). For profit-making purposes, it integrates many fancy functions that are not commonly used, and cleansing is not concise enough. Also for profit purposes, some functions are only available to paying users, and free users have limited experience. All these are the reasons why I have been unable to find a vocabulary memorization software that suits me for a long time. However, just nearly two years ago, when I was preparing for the graduate exam, I encountered Anki , a god-like memory software. The reason why it is called \u0026ldquo;memory software\u0026rdquo; rather than \u0026ldquo;word memorization software\u0026rdquo; is because it supports almost all content formats that need to be memorized, unlike many of the \u0026ldquo;professional software\u0026rdquo; mentioned above that can only be used to memorize words in specific languages. In fact, if you want, Anki Can be used to memorize Tang poetry, idioms, and even [Navajo](https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BA%B3%E7%93%A6%E9%9C%8D%E5%AF%86 %E7%A0%81/9482868?fromtitle=%E7%BA%B3%E7%93%A6%E8%8D%B7%E5%AF%86%E7%A0%81\u0026amp;fromid=6646373 \u0026ldquo;Baidu Encyclopedia entry for the Navajo Code\u0026rdquo;).\nSimply put, Anki is a tool that uses a card mechanism similar to Flash Cards to assist memory and supports high customization. So far, I have found that it has the following advantages that traditional word memorization software does not have:* Supports almost all content forms, there is nothing that Anki does not support except what you can’t think of.\nNot only supports traditional flip-up word cards, but also supports various answer forms such as fill-in-the-blank questions, multiple-choice questions, etc. to meet various needs. According to the [Ebbinghaus forgetting curve](https://baike.baidu.com/item/%E9%81%97%E5%BF%98%E6%9B%B2%E7%BA%BF/7278665?fromt itle=%E8%89%BE%E5%AE%BE%E6%B5%A9%E6%96%AF%E9%81%97%E5%BF%98%E6%9B%B2%E7%BA%BF\u0026amp;fromid=3905802 \u0026ldquo;Baidu Encyclopedia entry on Ebbinghaus\u0026rsquo; forgetting curve\u0026rdquo;) scientifically customizes learning and review plans to ensure efficient use of energy and time. The cloud backs up the vocabulary and learning progress in real time, and supports operating systems including PC, Mac, iOS, Android, etc., allowing users to easily synchronize learning progress across platforms and study anytime and anywhere. Supports the export and import of decks, combined with active communities and various resource sharing channels, so that users who are unwilling to make their own decks can efficiently enter the learning state by downloading and importing decks made by predecessors. Anki\u0026rsquo;s desktop version (including Windows and Mac) and mobile version (including iOS and Android) have almost identical functions, but the former is completely free and the latter must be paid. If you are neither willing to pay nor use a pirated version, then just use the desktop version. In this way, apart from not being able to obtain the experience of multi-platform synchronous learning, there will not be any specific functional restrictions. Anki\u0026rsquo;s desktop interface is very simple. You can click \u0026ldquo;New Memory\u0026rdquo; to customize your own deck, or click \u0026ldquo;Get Deck\u0026rdquo; to enter the Anki official website to browse and download ready-made decks uploaded by other users. In addition, there are sellers on trading websites such as Taobao or Xianyu who sell their own Anki decks for a fee. If you purchase those decks, you can easily import the purchased decks by clicking the \u0026ldquo;Import File\u0026rdquo; button. Taking the mobile phone as an example, during the process of learning decks, we can click on the buttons of different colors below according to our own answering conditions. In this way, Anki will add the corresponding cards to the corresponding review sequence, and dynamically arrange the learning plan based on the Ebbinghaus forgetting curve and our subsequent recall status. It can be said that Anki’s characteristic of dynamically customizing learning plans based on personal memory conditions is the most fundamental reason why it stands out from many “vocabulary memorizing software”. This time last year, I was preparing for the postgraduate re-examination of the school I was applying for. If I can say that the ideal score in my postgraduate foreign language examination is \u0026ldquo;mostly\u0026rdquo; the result of my own efforts, then Anki is \u0026ldquo;less than half\u0026rdquo; the reason.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200326/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eFor quite a few people, including me, memorizing words has almost become a necessity. Whether it is to prepare for exams, obtain various levels of certificates, or simply improve language skills, vocabulary is a challenge that we have to face head-on. In today\u0026rsquo;s Internet age, the method of memorizing heavy vocabulary books or dictionaries has been abandoned by most people, because it is boring and inefficient. It not only kills our enthusiasm for learning a language, but is also not conducive to cultivating a sense of language and putting it into practical use.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Anki May Be the Best Memory Aid Around"},{"content":"Compared with foreign countries, the public network disk ecology in China is like a pool of stagnant water. Of course, this is due to manufacturers not wanting to make progress, but more importantly, the government\u0026rsquo;s strict review of network information makes it difficult for public network disk service providers to strike a balance between maintaining their own survival and improving user experience.\nAfter a bloody storm a few years ago, the only public network disks that are famous in China are [Baidu Network Disk] (https://pan.baidu.com/ \u0026ldquo;Baidu Network Disk Official Website\u0026rdquo;), [Yutong Network Disk] (https://union.ctfile.com/ \u0026ldquo;Yutong Network Disk Official Website\u0026rdquo;) and [Nutt Cloud] (https://www.jianguoyun.com/ \u0026ldquo;Nutt Cloud Official Website\u0026rdquo;). The most notorious among them is Baidu, which not only has harsh functional restrictions on non-member users (land capacity + download speed limit), but is also extremely bloated and has many redundant functions that most users cannot use at all. In contrast, Nut Cloud is much better. It only limits monthly traffic for free users. In addition, it neither limits speed nor redundant content. It can be said to be very conscientious. However, compared with the convenience of Baidu Netdisk generating links for direct sharing, Nut Cloud is slightly insufficient in file sharing. Therefore, in the current domestic public network disk ecosystem, it is almost impossible to use a network disk product with simple functions, convenient sharing, and unlimited speed for free. In this case, many users began to turn to the Private Cloud (NAS) solution, that is, to establish a private network storage server, such as purchasing Synology or QNAP NAS host or build a DIY host yourself. However, both the former and the latter have certain technical thresholds and are not suitable for all users.\nAs a basic service in the Apple product ecosystem, iCloud is used by almost all Apple device users. Whether you realize it or not, whenever you take a photo with your iPhone, your photos are automatically stored in your iCloud. Regardless of whether you pay or not, as long as you sign up for an Apple ID, you\u0026rsquo;ll get 5GB of iCloud storage. Although this capacity is not large, it is completely sufficient for storing daily photos and office documents. For years, iCloud has been criticized for its closed nature. Perhaps for data security reasons, Apple does not allow users to share files in their iCloud drives with others. But the good news is that this situation has been completely changed in the latest MacOS system update.\nThis morning, when I turned on my computer and prepared to start today\u0026rsquo;s work, I found that Apple had pushed the latest version of MacOS 10.15.4 system update, and the update description contained a paragraph of envy: In other words, iCloud finally supports external file sharing! So I immediately updated the system and wanted to experience the feeling of sharing files with icloud as soon as possible. In the new version of the system, just right-click on the icloud file, select \u0026ldquo;Share\u0026rdquo;, and then click \u0026ldquo;Add User\u0026rdquo; to generate a sharing link for the file. After opening the \u0026ldquo;Add User\u0026rdquo; dialog box, we can set the shared link accordingly. If we only want to share files with invited users, we must not only set the \u0026ldquo;Users with access\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;Invited users only\u0026rdquo; below, but also fill in the email addresses of the users we invite above. Note that the \u0026ldquo;Invited User\u0026rdquo; function is currently only open to other Apple IDs, and the email address filled in must also be the login email address of the Apple ID. If we want to create a publicly shared link, rather than making it viewable only to specific users, then we can select \u0026ldquo;Anyone with the link.\u0026rdquo; In this way, as long as the shared link we created is sent to others, the users who own the link can open the corresponding link to browse the file at any time.\nIn addition, we can set the access permissions for shared files in the options below. Among them, \u0026ldquo;View Only\u0026rdquo; is read-only permission; \u0026ldquo;Can Change\u0026rdquo; is read-write permission. After the settings are completed, by clicking the \u0026ldquo;Share\u0026rdquo; button below, we create a sharing link for the specified file. After the shared link is created, it will be automatically copied to our clipboard, and the words \u0026ldquo;Shared by me\u0026rdquo; will appear after the name of the corresponding iCloud file, making it easier for us to find it later. Now, we can send the copied shared link to other users, and let them open the shared link through their browser to read or change the corresponding file. It is worth mentioning that if the shared file is in a format such as PDF, you can directly preview its content by opening the shared link without having to download and view it first, which is very convenient. ","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200325/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eCompared with foreign countries, the public network disk ecology in China is like a pool of stagnant water. Of course, this is due to manufacturers not wanting to make progress, but more importantly, the government\u0026rsquo;s strict review of network information makes it difficult for public network disk service providers to strike a balance between maintaining their own survival and improving user experience.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter a bloody storm a few years ago, the only public network disks that are famous in China are [Baidu Network Disk] (\u003ca href=\"https://pan.baidu.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://pan.baidu.com/\u003c/a\u003e\n \u0026ldquo;Baidu Network Disk Official Website\u0026rdquo;), [Yutong Network Disk] (\u003ca href=\"https://union.ctfile.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://union.ctfile.com/\u003c/a\u003e\n \u0026ldquo;Yutong Network Disk Official Website\u0026rdquo;) and [Nutt Cloud] (\u003ca href=\"https://www.jianguoyun.com/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ehttps://www.jianguoyun.com/\u003c/a\u003e\n \u0026ldquo;Nutt Cloud Official Website\u0026rdquo;). The most notorious among them is Baidu, which not only has harsh functional restrictions on non-member users (land capacity + download speed limit), but is also extremely bloated and has many redundant functions that most users cannot use at all. In contrast, Nut Cloud is much better. It only limits monthly traffic for free users. In addition, it neither limits speed nor redundant content. It can be said to be very conscientious.\n\u003cimg loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https://masonblog.github.io/images/blog20200325/jianguoyun.png\"\u003e\nHowever, compared with the convenience of Baidu Netdisk generating links for direct sharing, Nut Cloud is slightly insufficient in file sharing. Therefore, in the current domestic public network disk ecosystem, it is almost impossible to use a network disk product with simple functions, convenient sharing, and unlimited speed for free. In this case, many users began to turn to the \u003ca href=\"https://baike.baidu.com/item/NAS/3465615\" title=\"NAS Baidu Encyclopedia Entry\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePrivate Cloud (NAS)\u003c/a\u003e\n solution, that is, to establish a private network storage server, such as purchasing \u003ca href=\"https://www.synology.cn/zh-cn\" title=\"Synology Official Website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eSynology\u003c/a\u003e\n or \u003ca href=\"https://www.qnap.com.cn/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eQNAP\u003c/a\u003e\n NAS host or build a DIY host yourself. However, both the former and the latter have certain technical thresholds and are not suitable for all users.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"macOS 10.15.4 Adds iCloud Folder Sharing"},{"content":"On March 7, 2020, the Changjiang Daily published an article titled \u0026ldquo;Carry Out Gratitude Education Across the City and Build Strong Positive Energy.\u0026rdquo; It disclosed instructions from Wang Zhonglin, then Party secretary of Wuhan, at a video meeting of the city\u0026rsquo;s Covid prevention and control headquarters. He called for \u0026ldquo;gratitude education\u0026rdquo; among citizens, Party members, and cadres, centered on \u0026ldquo;listening to the Party, following the Party, and building strong positive energy.\u0026rdquo;\nAs soon as the article appeared, public opinion exploded. People criticized the Wuhan government for spending precious energy on such trivial work when the epidemic had not yet been effectively controlled. Under broad public condemnation, the media outlet quietly withdrew the article.\nBut withdrawing the article does not mean the end of \u0026ldquo;gratitude education.\u0026rdquo; Or rather, the retreat of this particular instance does not mean such education will disappear. On the contrary, throughout China\u0026rsquo;s long history since the Qin and Han, the culture of being grateful to power or grateful to the state has always been the greatest form of \u0026ldquo;positive energy.\u0026rdquo; As long as this culture and the soil that supports it remain, countless forms of \u0026ldquo;gratitude education\u0026rdquo; will not truly vanish.\nDuring China\u0026rsquo;s modernization, many people have mistakenly blamed this \u0026ldquo;gratitude culture\u0026rdquo; on Chinese tradition or so-called Confucian thought, and then launched a broad attack on Chinese tradition. In my view, however, these people seem to have chosen the wrong enemy at the very beginning of the revolution.\nWho are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is the first question of revolution. The basic reason why all past revolutionary struggles in China achieved so little is that they failed to unite with real friends in order to attack real enemies.\nMao Zedong, \u0026ldquo;Analysis of the Classes in Chinese Society\u0026rdquo;\nFirst, there is a real problem in what exactly people mean by the \u0026ldquo;Confucian thought\u0026rdquo; they criticize. Mencius of the Warring States period, whom modern people almost treat as a contemporary of Confucius, already differed sharply from Confucius on many issues. Confucianism then evolved over more than two thousand years, to the point that it resembles the Ship of Theseus . To treat \u0026ldquo;Confucian thought\u0026rdquo; as one unified thing and attack it under the label of \u0026ldquo;feudal ethics\u0026rdquo; is to pick the wrong enemy.\nThose who attack Confucianism seem able to see only \u0026ldquo;the body, hair, and skin are received from the parents and must not be damaged, which is the beginning of filial piety,\u0026rdquo; while ignoring \u0026ldquo;the people are most important, the state comes next, and the ruler is least.\u0026rdquo; The richness of Confucian thought and the variety of its schools are flattened by these \u0026ldquo;progressive\u0026rdquo; attackers into one backward and rotten image.\nSecond, the reason Confucianism came to appear backward and rotten in modern times is partly its own richness and partly the deliberate summaries of its attackers, but more importantly the domineering nature of imperial rule. China\u0026rsquo;s imperial system was highly practical. For Chinese emperors, anything useful for maintaining rule could be taken and used. In that environment, no matter how different schools of thought were at the beginning, they would eventually become highly homogenized under pressure from power.\nIn other words, even if the intellectual winner under Emperor Wu of Han had not been Dong Zhongshu\u0026rsquo;s Confucianism, but Huang-Lao thought, Yin-Yang thought, or some other school, later history would not have changed much. In fact, Dong Zhongshu\u0026rsquo;s Confucianism was already far removed from the Confucianism of Confucius and Mencius. To meet the needs of power, it had shed many of its inconvenient edges.\nSo who is the real enemy we should attack? Or to put it another way, where does China\u0026rsquo;s long-running \u0026ldquo;gratitude culture\u0026rdquo; really come from?\nThat is the topic I want to discuss today. As mentioned above, if ancient Chinese imperial rule played the game of \u0026ldquo;Confucianism on the outside, Legalism on the inside,\u0026rdquo; meaning it used Confucian morality on the surface to add legitimacy to rule while constantly practicing Legalist techniques of controlling the people, then the culprit behind \u0026ldquo;gratitude culture\u0026rdquo; should be the inner Legalism, not the outer Confucianism.\nAt this point, the answer is clear: when we oppose \u0026ldquo;gratitude culture,\u0026rdquo; what we should truly oppose is imperial rule and its Legalist methods, not the innocent Confucian thought worn as its outer garment.\n\u0026ldquo;Gratitude education\u0026rdquo; and the \u0026ldquo;gratitude culture\u0026rdquo; behind it are enduring parts of imperial rule. They will not naturally disappear just because the times move forward. If we never identify what we are truly opposing, gratitude education will continue. Today, when Article 1 of the Constitution of the People\u0026rsquo;s Republic of China states clearly that all power belongs to the people, there should be no more \u0026ldquo;gratitude education.\u0026rdquo;\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200311/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eOn March 7, 2020, the \u003cem\u003eChangjiang Daily\u003c/em\u003e published an article titled \u0026ldquo;Carry Out Gratitude Education Across the City and Build Strong Positive Energy.\u0026rdquo; It disclosed instructions from Wang Zhonglin, then Party secretary of Wuhan, at a video meeting of the city\u0026rsquo;s Covid prevention and control headquarters. He called for \u0026ldquo;gratitude education\u0026rdquo; among citizens, Party members, and cadres, centered on \u0026ldquo;listening to the Party, following the Party, and building strong positive energy.\u0026rdquo;\u003c/p\u003e","title":"What Are We Really Opposing When We Oppose 'Gratitude Education'?"},{"content":"As you can see, this blog is a completely static HTML site. Compared with dynamic sites written in PHP, static sites load faster and are easier to deploy. Even a complete beginner who cannot program can build a site of their own by spending a little time learning a few tools.\nThis site is rendered with Hugo . Hugo is very simple to use. If you want to learn it yourself, you can read the official documentation . Like other blogging systems, Hugo has many clean and attractive themes . The theme originally used by this site was maupassant . Update in 2024: after the blog migration, the current theme is PaperMod . The theme was originally developed by cho for Typecho , then ported to many other platforms and expanded with new features.\nAll Hugo pages support Markdown syntax. With Markdown, we can write posts with consistent formatting in any environment without worrying about appearance. Markdown is easy to learn; anyone can pick it up quickly. If you are interested, you can start with this tutorial . Typora was the lightweight cross-platform Markdown editor I was using at the time. Its interface is clean and simple, and it is free and open source. Update in 2024: Typora became paid software in 2022, and my current editor is MarkText .\nAfter Hugo generates the complete HTML pages, we can put them on a server. You can buy a virtual host, or more conveniently, use a Git repository to host your site. Git is a widely used version control tool, and a Git repository is a small server for hosting source code. The best-known Git hosting services are GitHub and GitLab . In addition to free source-code hosting, they also provide Pages hosting.\nPages were originally used as documentation pages for open-source projects, but they are also small static HTML web servers. With Pages, we can easily deploy a static website for free.\nIf you do not want to manually create pages or edit configuration files, and prefer a visual interface similar to the admin panel of a dynamic PHP blog, you can try Forestry . It is a visual content management system that supports multiple environments. With Forestry, you can manage a static site much like a dynamic blog and push edited content directly to your Git repository, creating a truly no-code website workflow.\nThis site was built with Hugo + Forestry + GitHub. From starting to learn the tools to writing this post, it took me three days in total. I am grateful to everyone who created these tools or wrote tutorials for free. Without standing on their shoulders, this site would never have come into being.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200310/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs you can see, this blog is a completely static HTML site. Compared with dynamic sites written in PHP, static sites load faster and are easier to deploy. Even a complete beginner who cannot program can build a site of their own by spending a little time learning a few tools.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis site is rendered with \u003ca href=\"https://gohugo.io/\" title=\"Hugo official website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eHugo\u003c/a\u003e\n. Hugo is very simple to use. If you want to learn it yourself, you can read the \u003ca href=\"https://gohugo.io/documentation/\" title=\"Hugo documentation\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eofficial documentation\u003c/a\u003e\n. Like other blogging systems, Hugo has many clean and attractive \u003ca href=\"https://themes.gohugo.io/\" title=\"Hugo themes\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ethemes\u003c/a\u003e\n. The theme originally used by this site was \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/flysnow-org/maupassant-hugo\" title=\"GitHub repository\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003emaupassant\u003c/a\u003e\n. Update in 2024: after the blog migration, the current theme is \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/adityatelange/hugo-PaperMod\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003ePaperMod\u003c/a\u003e\n. \u003cdel\u003eThe theme was originally developed by \u003ca href=\"https://github.com/pagecho\" title=\"GitHub profile\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003echo\u003c/a\u003e\n for \u003ca href=\"https://typecho.org/\" title=\"Typecho official website\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"\u003eTypecho\u003c/a\u003e\n, then ported to many other platforms and expanded with new features.\u003c/del\u003e\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Building a Personal Blog with Hugo and GitHub Pages"},{"content":"At the end of December 2019, Google released its word of the year as usual: \u0026ldquo;Hero.\u0026rdquo; This may have had something to do with the many superhero movies released that year. But in an age full of chaos and anxiety, calling for heroes does become one of people\u0026rsquo;s choices.\nAfter all, history is only an abbreviated record of past events, and it easily creates the illusion of a heroic view of history. The more a nation likes to \u0026ldquo;take history as a mirror,\u0026rdquo; the more likely it is to look eagerly for the arrival of a hero when facing a historical crisis it cannot handle. Napoleon for France and Hitler for Germany are examples, though the legacies they left were completely different. The former left the great French Civil Code and spread the spirit of French freedom and democracy across Europe; the latter left war, massacre, and a Germany reduced to ruins. Yet both were personally lifted onto the heroic throne by their own people.\nEvery heroic epic, whether tragedy or comedy, requires two elements: lazy people and ambitious men. People naturally tend to hand complicated problems in front of them to an exceptionally capable hero. Public affairs are complex and changeable. Handling them involves tedious calculation. Compared with participating and spending their own time and energy, people would rather throw themselves into brief and exciting public trials or movements of idolization. As for boring public affairs, let the hero deal with them.\nThe ones who fill this lazy demand are ambitious men. They always enter public view with unrealistic plans for salvation and promise people a beautiful new world flowing with milk and honey. Among many such figures, a few outstanding ones are chosen by the public and become \u0026ldquo;leaders\u0026rdquo; who will deal with the crisis and lead the people to the new world.\nOpen any history book, and the partnership between lazy people and ambitious men almost always ends in tragedy. Complex public issues do not have once-and-for-all solutions. Even if they did, they would not be imagined by a small group of leaders sitting high above everyone else. Solving public affairs requires the participation of all citizens. Attention, discussion, voting, and petitioning are all forms of participation. These are basic obligations that citizens should fulfill while enjoying their rights.\nLazy people ignore all civic duties except paying taxes and place their hopes in the appearance of heroes and leaders. In the end, they only attract ambitious men and create irreversible tragedy.\nAs members of an ancient nation that has not yet fully escaped such tragedy, we should remember the lessons of history: refuse to become lazy people who suffer the consequences of their own choices, refuse to become ambitious men full of beautiful visions, and work with other citizens to truly fulfill our civic duties. That is what taking history as a mirror really means.\nPublic trials and movements of idolization may be exciting, but citizens cannot immerse themselves in that false sense of participation and stop at the satisfaction of appetite. A great nation requires great citizens. Lazy people will never achieve \u0026ldquo;national rejuvenation.\u0026rdquo;\n2019 was a year of many troubles. I faintly smelled the cyclical decline of human civilization. In this unavoidable decline, which nations will sink, and which will make it through? That is a question worth thinking about.\nWithout doubt, the diligence and courage of the Chinese people are worth taking pride in. They have created the world\u0026rsquo;s second-largest economy despite layers of institutional obstacles. But as former Premier Wen Jiabao said, without successful political reform, economic reform cannot be carried through to the end. The gunshots thirty years ago silenced the whole people and pushed China\u0026rsquo;s reform into the awkward state of having nowhere left to reform.\nBut people\u0026rsquo;s silence does not mean they have chosen to be lazy. The world never needs heroes. What it needs is for everyone to abandon \u0026ldquo;isms,\u0026rdquo; study real problems, work together, and take responsibility for this ancient nation.\nMy phone ringtone is \u0026ldquo;Hero,\u0026rdquo; a song written by the American band Family of the Year for a yearly TV series. Its lyrics express the spirit of a younger generation that rejects grand narratives while still warmly welcoming the life ahead:\nLet me go, I don\u0026rsquo;t wanna be your hero. I don\u0026rsquo;t wanna be your big man, I just wanna fight with everyone else. You\u0026rsquo;re a masquerade, I don\u0026rsquo;t wanna be a part of your parade. Everyone deserves a chance to, Walk with everyone else.\nToday, China\u0026rsquo;s younger generation bears survival pressure far beyond what it should have to carry: sky-high housing prices, corporate exploitation, poisonous food, environmental pollution, a worsening aging population, and the social security gap that follows. None of these burdens can be easily solved by a \u0026ldquo;hero.\u0026rdquo;\nWe have had enough of grand narratives such as \u0026ldquo;mass entrepreneurship and innovation\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.\u0026rdquo; In the complex era ahead, these slogans seem painfully pale. In such difficult circumstances, we cannot place our hopes in the appearance of heroes. Or rather, only we can be our own heroes.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20200121/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAt the end of December 2019, Google released its word of the year as usual: \u0026ldquo;Hero.\u0026rdquo; This may have had something to do with the many superhero movies released that year. But in an age full of chaos and anxiety, calling for heroes does become one of people\u0026rsquo;s choices.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAfter all, history is only an abbreviated record of past events, and it easily creates the illusion of a heroic view of history. The more a nation likes to \u0026ldquo;take history as a mirror,\u0026rdquo; the more likely it is to look eagerly for the arrival of a hero when facing a historical crisis it cannot handle. Napoleon for France and Hitler for Germany are examples, though the legacies they left were completely different. The former left the great \u003cem\u003eFrench Civil Code\u003c/em\u003e and spread the spirit of French freedom and democracy across Europe; the latter left war, massacre, and a Germany reduced to ruins. Yet both were personally lifted onto the heroic throne by their own people.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The World Does Not Need Heroes"},{"content":"In recent years, as Gustave Le Bon\u0026rsquo;s The Crowd has become popular among readers, Chinese-language society has seen a wave of stigmatizing \u0026ldquo;the masses.\u0026rdquo; People seem to have found, in Le Bon\u0026rsquo;s arguments that lack logical continuity and empirical support, a justification for \u0026ldquo;controlling\u0026rdquo; public opinion. Following the method of looking for evidence after deciding on a conclusion, a series of \u0026ldquo;crimes\u0026rdquo; by mass opinion have been made public. Thus the claim that \u0026ldquo;public opinion eats people\u0026rdquo; has itself been accepted by \u0026ldquo;public opinion,\u0026rdquo; producing a strange scene of self-disarmament.\nIn fact, public opinion is not free of wrongdoing, and snowflakes are not entirely just. China has old sayings such as \u0026ldquo;three people make a tiger\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;the mouths of the crowd can melt metal.\u0026rdquo; With the spread of mobile internet, the original sin of public opinion has been amplified as never before. The \u0026ldquo;three people\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;many mouths\u0026rdquo; that once operated only in communities of acquaintances have turned into a destructive avalanche.\nBut we must recognize that the injustice of a snowflake can only be established within a specific case. To discuss whether snowflakes are just on a more general level, we must break free from the limits of individual cases and discover the deeper reasons why public opinion commits wrongdoing.\nLooking across repeated storms of public opinion on Chinese social media, it is not hard to see three inborn \u0026ldquo;original sins\u0026rdquo; of mass opinion: plurality, volatility, and destructiveness.\nPlurality means the natural diversity of mass opinion caused by differences in social background, values, and individual experience. But public opinion that is merely plural is not destructive like an avalanche. On the contrary, it can promote public discussion of social events, deepen people\u0026rsquo;s understanding through confrontation with different views, and ease conflicts caused by individual differences. In this sense, the plurality of mass opinion is the basis of its neutrality. It is not an original sin, but rather an original good.\nTherefore, avalanches mainly arise from the other two original sins: volatility and destructiveness. Volatility refers to the way the mainstream position of public opinion swings back and forth as information about an event is disclosed. Because the public often invests emotion in its positions and views, whether that emotion comes from empathy for the parties involved or identification with a shared public understanding, every reversal of the mainstream position intensifies anger toward the perceived villain. In this process of emotional accumulation, the destructiveness of public opinion grows.\nIf the final target of public opinion is the correct villain, then public opinion has done a satisfying good deed. If the target is the wrong villain, then the tragedy of \u0026ldquo;three people make a tiger\u0026rdquo; unfolds and the avalanche occurs.\nJudging whether an outcome meets the standard of justice requires a long passage of time. That conflicts with the naturally short attention span of the public. In addition, the standard of justice itself is plural. So abstractly discussing whether a snowflake is just is meaningless. To reduce the chance that public opinion causes avalanches, we must start with its volatility and destructiveness. Without expecting public opinion to do good, we should at least make it do less harm.\nThe volatility of public opinion comes from delays or falsehoods in information disclosure. Therefore, improving the speed and credibility of information disclosure is the best way to reduce reversals. A healthy society cannot function without independent and free news media. Such media can provide an effective channel for vulnerable groups to speak, relieving accumulated resentment caused by blocked information flow. They can also disclose timely and accurate information about public events, preventing public opinion from swinging back and forth because of asymmetry of information.\nIn other words, credible news media can act as a lubricant for mass opinion, reducing its volatility and destructiveness as much as possible and dissolving avalanches before they form.\nToday, there are two opposite views of the social role of mass opinion. One view holds that its three original sins mean it can only lead to avalanche-like verbal violence and is therefore unjust. The other view holds that when public remedies fail, public opinion can spontaneously uphold justice and is therefore just.\nThe former demonizes mass opinion while ignoring the deeper causes that lead to or intensify its wrongdoing. The latter is too idealistic and gives public opinion a mission it should not bear. Both views ignore, or selectively ignore, the importance of news media: the former ignores the media\u0026rsquo;s role in guiding and restraining public opinion; the latter ignores the media\u0026rsquo;s role in supervising and checking public power.\nThe Chinese internet is full of low-quality rumors and online violence against all kinds of groups. People seem to have gradually drifted away from the internet\u0026rsquo;s original purpose of connecting people. One reason for this is the loss of credibility and independence among formal media. Vulnerable groups have lost effective channels to speak. The public has lost reliable sources of information. People live constantly in fear and anxiety. Anger and hostility spread, and the villains who repeatedly appear in social events, whether they are truly villains or not, become outlets for release.\nSo arguing over \u0026ldquo;whether snowflakes are just\u0026rdquo; is only scratching an itch through a boot. The real problem is like the elephant in the room. Smart people all know it is there; they simply refuse to say it aloud.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20191209/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn recent years, as Gustave Le Bon\u0026rsquo;s \u003cem\u003eThe Crowd\u003c/em\u003e has become popular among readers, Chinese-language society has seen a wave of stigmatizing \u0026ldquo;the masses.\u0026rdquo; People seem to have found, in Le Bon\u0026rsquo;s arguments that lack logical continuity and empirical support, a justification for \u0026ldquo;controlling\u0026rdquo; public opinion. Following the method of looking for evidence after deciding on a conclusion, a series of \u0026ldquo;crimes\u0026rdquo; by mass opinion have been made public. Thus the claim that \u0026ldquo;public opinion eats people\u0026rdquo; has itself been accepted by \u0026ldquo;public opinion,\u0026rdquo; producing a strange scene of self-disarmament.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"The 'Justice' of Snowflakes and the Elephant in the Room"},{"content":"Accompanying the new sense of national pride brought about by rapid economic growth is the rise of the so-called \u0026ldquo;Chinese special theory.\u0026rdquo; While emphasizing the differences between China and other countries, it gives the current system a legal cloak that is “in line with national conditions,” thereby rejecting structural reforms in basic theory. At the same time, it exaggerates the “incomprehensibility” of Chinese culture to foreigners and refuses to accept dissection and criticism of itself by people outside the Chinese cultural circle. In any case, the theory of \u0026ldquo;China Special\u0026rdquo; constitutes one of the pillars of \u0026ldquo;xenophobia\u0026rdquo; as mentioned by Li Kanru, and it has opened the door for some conservatives to \u0026ldquo;work behind closed doors\u0026rdquo;**.\nNo matter which country or nation it is, it must have the common characteristics of all mankind that all countries or nations have, and also have characteristics that other countries or nations do not possess. This is the basic proposition of Marxist philosophy. In this sense, a scholar born in the United States, whose cultural customs and social structure are different from China\u0026rsquo;s, will inevitably have the unique insights of an \u0026ldquo;onlooker\u0026rdquo; who escape from China\u0026rsquo;s inherent concepts in his observations and interpretations of China, as well as inevitable misunderstandings due to language or cultural barriers. Therefore, \u0026ldquo;Governing China: From Revolution to Reform\u0026rdquo; written by Kanru Lee, a well-known expert on China issues in the United States who once held an important public position in the White House, is not a \u0026ldquo;foreigner\u0026rsquo;s work\u0026rdquo; that can be laughed off.\nThe Chinese version of \u0026ldquo;Governing China\u0026rdquo; was published in 2010. At that time, China was in the \u0026ldquo;golden age\u0026rdquo; of sustained economic growth, continuous improvement of social welfare, and relatively open politics. The gratifying results of reform and opening up made countless Chinese people full of confidence in the future. However, most people did not expect that just nine years later, the evil consequences of China\u0026rsquo;s system that had been accumulated for many years would begin to show. Today, faced with a series of problems at home and abroad, people are once again as confused as they were in the early 1990s. And the more it is at this time, the more we need to absorb the nutrients of \u0026ldquo;outsiders\u0026rdquo;. We might as well open this book, which was published more than 20 years ago, and see how Americans at that time viewed China\u0026rsquo;s historical development in the past century.\nThis book has 11 chapters in total. The first part roughly sorts out the overall characteristics of the Chinese imperial era and the history of the Republic of China. The second part introduces the history of the Republic since 1949 and discusses the governance issues faced by Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, and Chinese leaders in the post-Deng Xiaoping era. Detailed analysis; the third part introduces in detail the operation model and decision-making process of China\u0026rsquo;s current political system; the fourth part analyzes the challenges that the Chinese model will face in the future and possible solutions from the perspectives of economic development, environmental protection and social governance.[①]\nThis article will combine the author\u0026rsquo;s own understanding of Chinese politics and culture, starting from the two perspectives of \u0026ldquo;insight\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;misreading\u0026rdquo;, to analyze the viewpoints in this book that are worthy of attention or discussion. \u0026ldquo;Articles convey the truth\u0026rdquo; has always been highly praised by Chinese intellectuals, so the analysis in this article inevitably incorporates the author\u0026rsquo;s own value judgment.\n\u0026ldquo;External Confucianism\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Internal Law\u0026rdquo;: the first division of China\u0026rsquo;s modernization pathLike most researchers of modern Chinese history, Li Kanru regards the anti-traditional trends that have arisen since modern times as \u0026ldquo;anti-Confucianism\u0026rdquo; and believes that the hierarchical order and black power left over from imperial China are all \u0026ldquo;Confucian\u0026rdquo; ideas. However, since Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty deposed hundreds of schools of thought and only respected Confucianism, imperial China has actually been pursuing the methods of Huang Lao and Legalism. Just to maintain the legal system of \u0026ldquo;matching heaven with virtue\u0026rdquo; that had continued since the Western Zhou Dynasty, the rulers had to put a gentle Confucian cloak on the cruel ruling techniques. Although the civil servants who studied and believed in Confucianism did have some moral constraints on the emperor as a price for maintaining the legal system, the nature of imperial China, which was full of political maneuvering, military intrigue, bureaucratic decadence and social unrest from beginning to end, has not changed[②]. This is the so-called imperial tradition of \u0026ldquo;external Confucianism and internal law\u0026rdquo;. Its core is actually \u0026ldquo;internal law\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;Confucianism\u0026rdquo; as a mere outer layer can be replaced by any other thought. No matter how hard the rulers try to package it, the cruel nature of the empire will not change just because of the change in appearance. On the one hand, Li Kanru realized that \u0026ldquo;Although Confucianism was the official ideology for most of the two thousand years of Chinese history, in practice it adopted a large number of legalist ideas.\u0026rdquo; On the other hand, he attributed the imperial model of \u0026ldquo;students obey their teachers, children obey their parents, subordinates obey their superiors, and everyone respects the emperor\u0026rdquo; to the influence of \u0026ldquo;Confucianism.\u0026rdquo; He mistakenly attributed China\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;feudal ethics\u0026rdquo; to the \u0026ldquo;influence of Confucianism\u0026rdquo; while ignoring the essence of imperial China\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;external Confucianism and internal law\u0026rdquo;.\nThe modern representative democracy in the West originated from the feudal system in the Middle Ages[③]. In this strictly hierarchical system, social concerns ranged from near to far, thus giving rise to the political principle of \u0026ldquo;the vassals of my vassals are not my vassals.\u0026rdquo; This system of allocating rights and obligations based on closeness and distance in social relationships coincides with the \u0026ldquo;cultivation of Qi and peace\u0026rdquo; advocated by Confucianism. The effective operation of representative democracy must be based on a community of acquaintances and local consciousness, which is precisely the natural extension of the European feudal system and Confucianism that also originated in the feudal system environment of the Western Zhou Dynasty. If \u0026ldquo;internal law\u0026rdquo; constitutes the core principle of the imperial system, then \u0026ldquo;external Confucianism\u0026rdquo; contains the foundation of the modern democratic system.\nWhen imperial China, which had been closed off for a long time, began to passively come into direct contact with Western civilization, those Chinese who were the first to \u0026ldquo;open their eyes to see the world\u0026rdquo; were keenly aware that the social system generally followed by Westerners was highly similar to the social system envisioned in the Confucian classics they had studied with great concentration for many years. They described Western society as an ideal state in which \u0026ldquo;the top and bottom are of one mind, conduct themselves according to etiquette, and take care of the world\u0026rsquo;s affairs[④]\u0026rdquo;, and summarized the basic principles of this ideal society as \u0026ldquo;the world is for the common good.\u0026rdquo; Therefore, for a considerable period of time in the late Qing Dynasty and the early Republic of China, those intellectuals who would later be called \u0026ldquo;conservatives\u0026rdquo; were inspired by the commonalities between the democratic system and Confucian classics and began to reflect on the cruel imperial system. The reason why they were called \u0026ldquo;conservatives\u0026rdquo; by later generations of activists was precisely because they only opposed \u0026ldquo;internal law\u0026rdquo; and not \u0026ldquo;foreign Confucianism\u0026rdquo;, thus giving people the impression of \u0026ldquo;defenders of feudal ethics\u0026rdquo;.After the \u0026ldquo;May 4th\u0026rdquo; New Culture Movement, under the combined influence of a series of complex factors at home and abroad, the \u0026ldquo;progressive ideological trend\u0026rdquo; of \u0026ldquo;anti-foreign Confucianism\u0026rdquo; began to become the mainstream of China\u0026rsquo;s ideological circles. This was exactly what Mr. Li Zehou called a turning point in which \u0026ldquo;salvation overcame enlightenment.\u0026rdquo; However, what may overwhelm \u0026ldquo;enlightenment\u0026rdquo; may not be \u0026ldquo;saving the nation\u0026rdquo;, but \u0026ldquo;internal law\u0026rdquo; packaged in modernity. In sharp contrast to Confucianism, which advocated \u0026ldquo;differentiated love\u0026rdquo; and valued social relationships between near and far, Legalism advocated \u0026ldquo;undifferentiated obedience\u0026rdquo;, aiming to break the inherent social network of feudal society and closely unite atomized individuals around the ruler[⑤]. The \u0026ldquo;progressive trend of thought\u0026rdquo; regards the highly centralized nationalism of Germany and Japan as a shortcut to China\u0026rsquo;s modernization, and then shifts from \u0026ldquo;learning from Britain and the United States\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;learning from Britain and the United States through Germany and Japan\u0026rdquo; so that China will not fall too far behind in the Spencer-style \u0026ldquo;national competition\u0026rdquo;. Rather than saying that China after the May 4th Movement was one in which \u0026ldquo;national salvation prevailed over enlightenment,\u0026rdquo; it would be better to say that \u0026ldquo;internal law prevailed over foreign Confucianism,\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;Germany and Japan prevailed over Britain and the United States.\u0026rdquo;\nAs Li Kanru described in his book, the Kuomintang founded by Sun Yat-sen after the Second Revolution was a highly centralized \u0026ldquo;Leninist party\u0026rdquo;, while the Communist Party, which developed almost at the same time as the Kuomintang, also had a Leninist organizational style and \u0026ldquo;had similar social and political origins\u0026rdquo;**. Therefore, both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party have been practitioners of the \u0026ldquo;progressive trend of thought\u0026rdquo; since the \u0026ldquo;May Fourth Movement\u0026rdquo;, but they have serious differences on the approach to realizing modernization.\n“Elite” and “Masses”: Sharp Confrontation between Two Revolutionary Subjects The victory of the Soviet-Russian October Revolution provided the \u0026ldquo;progressive ideological trend\u0026rdquo; after the \u0026ldquo;May 4th Movement\u0026rdquo; with a new path to modernization that was different from that of Germany and Japan. Li Kanru believes that ***Marxism, as a \u0026ldquo;\u0026lsquo;scientific\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;progressive\u0026rsquo; Western theory that predicts the collapse of the Western capitalist system in revolutionary changes,\u0026rdquo; allowed some intellectuals at the time to see the possibility of \u0026ldquo;quickly bringing China into the ranks of the vanguard of civilization defined by this theory.\u0026rdquo; With the help of the Comintern, these intellectuals formed the Communist Party of China.\nUnlike Germany and Japan, which mainly promoted reform or revolution through the middle and upper classes, the main body of the socialist revolution in Soviet Russia was workers, farmers and grassroots soldiers who were widely mobilized. Li Dazhao called the victory of this revolution \u0026ldquo;the victory of the common people\u0026rdquo;[⑥]. The premise of the German-Japanese \u0026ldquo;elite revolution\u0026rdquo; is that there is a large-scale emerging aristocratic group in the country where the revolution occurs. These new aristocrats not only have social resources at their disposal that are sufficient to promote social revolution, but they are also dissatisfied with the old system. For countries like imperial Russia and imperial China, where the capitalist economy is not yet mature and the emerging aristocracy has not yet formed a revolutionary force, the German-Japanese-style elite approach may not be applicable.\nThe early founders of the Communist Party were aware of this. Since China at the end of the Qing Dynasty had not yet formed a bourgeoisie of a certain scale, after the success of the Revolution of 1911, the revolutionary party quickly lost control of the new regime. Although Sun Yat-sen did build an armed force after returning to Guangzhou, the success of the Northern Expedition was also inseparable from his mass line of \u0026ldquo;alliance with Russia and the Communist Party\u0026rdquo; and the reality of the separatist rule of the Chinese warlords in the north.The right-wing camp of the Kuomintang headed by Chiang Kai-shek did not agree with the Communist Party’s mass revolutionary method. They insisted on following the German-Japanese elitist line. The conflict between the two sides broke out after the death of Sun Yat-sen, who suffered almost all casualties in the \u0026ldquo;Purge Party\u0026rdquo; campaign launched by Chiang Kai-shek. It was the late 1920s, when emerging powers such as Germany and Japan were rapidly sliding towards fascism and militarism. Influenced by this trend of thought, Chiang Kai-shek began to advocate the \u0026ldquo;New Life Movement\u0026rdquo; and parted ways with the Communist Party, which advocated a mass revolutionary line. Although the \u0026ldquo;New Life Movement\u0026rdquo; has the appearance of Confucianism and Christianity, its essence is to use political high pressure to cultivate the habit of obedience among citizens. This is still a replica of imperial China\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;external Confucianism and internal law\u0026rdquo;[⑦] . In this sense, China\u0026rsquo;s modernization process has never been truly completed.\nLi Kanru attributed the Kuomintang\u0026rsquo;s ultimate defeat to \u0026ldquo;three ills deeply rooted in traditional Chinese political culture\u0026rdquo;, namely \u0026ldquo;nepotism, corruption and all talk but no action.\u0026rdquo; This actually underestimates the Chinese people\u0026rsquo;s tolerance for the imperial system and the appeal of the \u0026ldquo;mass revolution\u0026rdquo; line pursued by the Communist Party. Although the Communist Party’s land policy was briefly relaxed during the Anti-Japanese War, its land revolutionary movement, which widely mobilized lower-level farmers to “attack local tyrants and divide their fields,” did effectively incorporate the peasant group, which accounted for the majority of China’s population at that time, into its own revolutionary activities. By the end of the Liberation War, China at that time had no power to resist the \u0026ldquo;revolutionary social changes of the Communist Party.\u0026rdquo;\n\u0026ldquo;Orthodoxy\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;National Conditions\u0026rdquo;: Differences between the Two Revolutionary Lines and the Turbulent Thirty Years As early as the first cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, there were differences within the Communist Party regarding the revolutionary line: On one side were the \u0026ldquo;orthodox Marxists\u0026rdquo; headed by representatives of the Comintern and intellectuals with overseas study background in the party. They advocated using industrial workers as the main body of the revolution, seizing power through urban riots, and ultimately establishing a proletarian society. The government of class dictatorship; on the other side are the \u0026ldquo;Marxists based on national conditions\u0026rdquo; headed by China\u0026rsquo;s local farmers and traditional intellectuals. They advocate using farmers as the main body of the revolution, seizing power through peasant wars, and ultimately establishing a coalition government jointly led by the progressive class[⑧] . Although the two sides reached an agreement on correcting the \u0026ldquo;right capitulationism\u0026rdquo; of Chen Duxiu and others after Chiang Kai-shek launched the \u0026ldquo;April 12\u0026rdquo; coup, differences within the party regarding the revolutionary line have always existed. It was not until the \u0026ldquo;Orthodox faction\u0026rdquo;\u0026rsquo;s wrong command caused the entire party to suffer heavy losses in the fifth \u0026ldquo;Counter Encirclement and Suppression Campaign\u0026rdquo; and the \u0026ldquo;National Conditions faction\u0026rdquo; gained the main leadership in the party that the differences came to an end temporarily.\nHowever, as Li Kanru said, the peasant line of the Communist Party\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;national conditions faction\u0026rdquo; made it possible that when the Communist Party seized power in 1949, \u0026ldquo;the vast majority of party members were composed of farmers.\u0026rdquo; These people \u0026ldquo;instinctively tended to oppose the cities and intellectuals.\u0026rdquo; They were “unable to master the paper work characteristic of large-scale administrations, but gained the power to occupy high positions in the political institutions that governed the country”. It was this unsuccessful transition from revolutionist to ruler that ultimately led to the historical upheaval of the first thirty years of the Republic.As the leader of the \u0026ldquo;national conditions faction\u0026rdquo; and even the entire Communist Party, Mao Zedong also had the problem of \u0026ldquo;role reversal\u0026rdquo; mentioned above. Li Kanru believed that ** as a successful revolutionary, Mao Zedong \u0026ldquo;must maintain a high degree of enthusiasm\u0026rdquo;, which was \u0026ldquo;difficult to be compatible with smooth administrative management\u0026rdquo;. Revolutionaries \u0026ldquo;tend to see complex management as an obstacle to the achievement of their goals\u0026rdquo;, while civil servants \u0026ldquo;often have to throw a damper on the enthusiasm and lack of technical expertise that underlie revolutionaries\u0026rsquo; decision-making impulses\u0026rdquo;. It was this long-standing tension between revolutionary leaders and the bureaucracy that forced Mao Zedong to use his \u0026ldquo;philosophy of struggle[⑨]\u0026rdquo; again and again to confront the bureaucracy he had established himself. And it was this “cyclical battle against its own creation” that left the Communist leaders who took over power in 1976 with a “country exhausted by social conflict” and a “government system in which mutual distrust and factional strife have become irreversible”.\nIn the turbulent thirty years at the beginning of the founding of the Republic, the technocrats represented by Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai objectively played a certain role in restricting Mao Zedong. Because of this, they have always been regarded by Mao as part of the \u0026ldquo;rotten and backward\u0026rdquo; bureaucracy, and they have been constantly suppressed in the power struggle. It was not until the deaths of Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai in 1976 that Deng Xiaoping gradually came to the center of power and started the reform process of \u0026ldquo;rectifying chaos.\u0026rdquo; Although during the same period, debates about the reform route reappeared within the party, Deng Xiaoping relied on his extraordinary political skills to balance the forces of all parties and lead a confused China onto a \u0026ldquo;pragmatic\u0026rdquo; development path.\n“Politics” and “Economy”: Advancement and Stagnation of Institutional Reform In Li Kanru\u0026rsquo;s words, the reforms in the 1980s were a process of \u0026ldquo;first taking bold actions, then trying to adapt to the results and trying our best to move forward.\u0026rdquo; The main target of reform is the political and economic system based on Mao Zedong\u0026rsquo;s principles of egalitarianism and collectivism. It began in the ideological field, that is, \u0026ldquo;flexibly applying Mao Zedong Thought\u0026rdquo; to \u0026ldquo;liberate China from the shackles of dogmatism\u0026rdquo; [⑩]; it reached its peak in the economic field, saving the Chinese economy from the verge of collapse in Mao Zedong\u0026rsquo;s late period; and finally ended in the political field.\nAlthough most people attribute China\u0026rsquo;s reforms in the 1980s to Deng Xiaoping, the \u0026ldquo;chief architect of reform\u0026rdquo;, it was Hu Yaobang, the \u0026ldquo;chief engineer of reform\u0026rdquo;, and Zhao Ziyang, who succeeded him, who actually promoted reforms at the policy level. Fierce debates about the reform route accompanied almost the entire reform process in the 1980s. On one side of the debate were the \u0026ldquo;enlightened factions\u0026rdquo; represented by Hu Yaobang and Zhao Ziyang, who were \u0026ldquo;convinced that more fundamental changes must be made in order to establish a more humane political system and market economy\u0026rdquo;; on the other side were the \u0026ldquo;conservatives\u0026rdquo; headed by the older generation of revolutionaries, who \u0026ldquo;eager to restore the time before a series of \u0026rsquo;left\u0026rsquo; radicalism\u0026rdquo;**.The \u0026ldquo;political turmoil at the turn of spring and summer\u0026rdquo; in 1989 announced the end of this debate that had lasted for many years. The \u0026ldquo;enlightened faction\u0026rdquo; completely lost the right to speak within the party, and the reform stalled for a time. Fortunately, Deng Xiaoping\u0026rsquo;s \u0026ldquo;Southern Talk\u0026rdquo; restarted the process of economic system reform and put the confused party and country on the road to the development of a \u0026ldquo;market economy.\u0026rdquo; The new round of institutional reforms that began in the early 1990s built the government\u0026rsquo;s legitimacy on the principle of \u0026ldquo;performanceism,\u0026rdquo; that is, all institutional reforms must serve to improve economic efficiency. This strategy has been effective until recently, with China\u0026rsquo;s economy growing at an average annual rate of nearly 10%. However, the long-term stagnation of political system reform has also cast a shadow over the deepening of economic system reform and China\u0026rsquo;s long-term development.\nIn 2012, former Premier Wen Jiabao called at the National People\u0026rsquo;s Congress press conference: \u0026ldquo;Without the success of political reform, economic reform cannot be carried out to the end. [⑪]\u0026rdquo; This statement pointed out a fundamental problem facing China today. Li Kanru analyzed the challenges that China will face in the economy, environmental protection and society from the perspective of the political system. The core crux is a series of fundamental contradictions that exist in China\u0026rsquo;s political system.\n\u0026ldquo;Governing China\u0026rdquo; was written in the 1990s, more than 20 years ago. Although China has undergone tremendous changes in the past two decades, the fundamental problem of stagnant political system reform has not been resolved. In this sense, Li Kanru\u0026rsquo;s book is not completely outdated. As mentioned above, Li Kanru’s understanding of modern Chinese history has both insights and misunderstandings. What our generation needs to do is to carefully eliminate the misunderstood parts and absorb the parts of its insights.\nIn 2019, China is facing changes unprecedented in decades. At this historical turning point, we must carry out reform and opening up to the end with an open mind and a humble attitude. China\u0026rsquo;s land and people have suffered endless suffering for thousands of years. We cannot allow the painful history to repeat itself, and we cannot allow the reverse trend of the \u0026ldquo;Cultural Revolution\u0026rdquo; to occur again.\n[①] Li Kanru. Governing China: From Revolution to Reform[M]. China Social Sciences Press, 2010.\n[②] Xiong Yi. Spring and Autumn Days: Imperial Power and Academics in the Traditional Chinese Context[M]. Shaanxi Normal University Press, 2007.\n[③] The \u0026ldquo;feudal system\u0026rdquo; here only refers to the social system of \u0026ldquo;feudal states and founding states\u0026rdquo;, not the \u0026ldquo;feudal period\u0026rdquo; as a historical form commonly referred to by Chinese academic circles, the same below.\n[④] Liu Xihong. Private Notes of Yingjin[M]. Yuelu Publishing House, 1986.\n[⑤] Qin Hui. \u0026ldquo;Greater Community Orientation\u0026rdquo; and Traditional Chinese Society (Part 2)[D]. Social Science Research, 1999.\n[⑥] Li Dazhao. The victory of the common people[J]. New Youth, 1918, 5(5): 436-4.\n[⑦] Liu Wennan. Disciplining Daily Life: The New Life Movement and the Governance of Modern Countries[J]. Journal of Nanjing University: Philosophy. Humanities. Social Sciences, 2013 (5): 89-102.\n[⑧] Mao Zedong. On Coalition Government[M]. Green Apple Data Center, 2013.\n[⑨] In his book, Li Kanru summarized the characteristics of Mao Zedong Thought as follows: ideological leadership, theory of the will of the people, opposition to intellectuals, contradiction analysis, and good use of mass movements.\n[⑩] What this mainly refers to is “the discussion on the standard of truth.”[⑪] Frontline Reporting Team of People\u0026rsquo;s Daily Online. Wen Jiabao: Without the success of political reform, economic reform cannot be carried out to the end[EB/OL] People\u0026rsquo;s Daily, 2012.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20191202/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAccompanying the new sense of national pride brought about by rapid economic growth is the rise of the so-called \u0026ldquo;Chinese special theory.\u0026rdquo; While emphasizing the differences between China and other countries, it gives the current system a legal cloak that is “in line with national conditions,” thereby rejecting structural reforms in basic theory. At the same time, it exaggerates the “incomprehensibility” of Chinese culture to foreigners and refuses to accept dissection and criticism of itself by people outside the Chinese cultural circle. In any case, the theory of \u0026ldquo;China Special\u0026rdquo; constitutes one of the pillars of \u0026ldquo;xenophobia\u0026rdquo; as mentioned by Li Kanru, and it has opened the door for some conservatives to \u0026ldquo;work behind closed doors\u0026rdquo;**.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Revolution and Reform: Li Kanru’s Insights and Misunderstandings of China"},{"content":"In a certain sense, Orwell was my political enlightenment. When I was in junior high school, my history teacher gave me a thin little book on a lazy afternoon as a reward for improved exam results. The book was Animal Farm. That night, after I got home, I read it in one sitting. Although I did not yet understand Soviet history or the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, this short fable still shocked me deeply. From then on, I began reading works of philosophy and ethics since the Enlightenment, and developed a strong interest in modern left-wing thought beginning with Rousseau.\nOrwell\u0026rsquo;s Life Like many left-wing activists from upper-class backgrounds, Orwell\u0026rsquo;s revolutionary life began with deep sympathy for the lower classes in colonial India. He graduated from Eton, the famous elite school, yet during the Spanish Civil War he resolutely gave up a comfortable life and joined the International Brigades. After witnessing the Red Terror carried out by the Republican government and the Soviet Union during the war, Orwell began to reexamine the so-called socialist revolution.\nThe Spanish Civil War ended with Franco\u0026rsquo;s victory. After returning to Britain, Orwell began his writing career[1]. His works largely reflect on socialist revolution and socialist systems. His best-known books, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four, became propaganda texts for the capitalist camp during the Cold War. Some people therefore believe that Orwell changed his political position after the Spanish Civil War.\nI do not think so. Reflection does not mean opposition. As an activist who had truly entered the socialist movement, Orwell understood the nature of revolution better than those \u0026ldquo;theorists\u0026rdquo; who sat in warm studies and imagined revolution with only passion and sympathy. His reflection on revolution and satire of the socialist movement were careful decisions made from the reason and conscience he inherited from the Enlightenment. They cannot be explained away by the phrase \u0026ldquo;change of position.\u0026rdquo;\nThe Story of Animal Farm The plot of Animal Farm is simple. A group of animals exploited by humans start a revolution under the leadership of the pigs. After driving away the human farmer, they build an ideal society of animal equality according to Old Major\u0026rsquo;s original vision. But the good days at the beginning of the new regime vanish quickly. The revolutionary leader Napoleon, representing Stalin, drives his comrade Snowball, representing Trotsky, off the farm and begins his path toward dictatorship.\nThe book reaches its satirical climax at the end: the revolutionary leaders who once opposed humans completely begin walking on two legs like humans, and bring human exploitation back to the farm in even harsher form. The difference from the old human rule is that exploitation in the new society becomes more deceptive under the decoration of propaganda. Through repeated political messaging, the animals not only silently accept their renewed slavery, but also begin to feel grateful to the new exploiters[2].\nThis is another story of the dragon-slayer becoming the dragon: revolutionaries become new dictators after the revolution succeeds. History often cycles through this tug-of-war between autocracy and revolution. People call that cycle the historical cycle.\nThe Historical Cycle Orwell and Tocqueville are affectionately called \u0026ldquo;contemporaries\u0026rdquo; by many later intellectuals[3]. This is not only because their ideas were prophetic and universal, but also because the history they experienced has not become obsolete with the passage of time. People often sigh that history is astonishingly similar, but few seriously think about history and its similarities.\nIn nearly four thousand years of recorded Chinese history, the cycle of autocracy and revolution has repeated again and again. Every dynastic change was accompanied by terrifying massacre and famine. In this sense, Orwell and Tocqueville, two cold thinkers far away, became China\u0026rsquo;s contemporaries through the irony of history.\nOn the question of how to escape the historical cycle, Mao Zedong once discussed it with Huang Yanpei. Mao gave \u0026ldquo;democracy\u0026rdquo; as the only solution[4]. Yet when we look back at history many years later, in front of repeated tragedies, Mao\u0026rsquo;s answer seems too light, and his later practice failed to answer his own words.\nSo we have to ask: what causes the historical cycle of autocracy and revolution? What conditions are needed to escape it? Are the commonalities among the world\u0026rsquo;s peoples enough to support the transplantation and spread of historical experience?\nThese questions may seem old, but they carry heavy significance for the real world. Since the second half of the nineteenth century, countries around the world have experienced their own democratization processes. Some were peaceful; others were violent. The irony of history is that violent revolution often seems to come together with dictatorship: Cromwell in the English Revolution, Robespierre in the French Revolution, Stalin in the Russian Revolution, Mussolini in the Italian Revolution.\nThe possible explanation is roughly this: to unite a faction and complete a revolution amid a complicated situation, there must be a leader with extraordinary execution ability and charisma. This great revolutionary leader becomes the focus of all contradictions in modern violent revolution: the process of revolution must be autocratic, while the result of revolution is supposed to be democratic[5]. In theory, escaping the historical cycle is simple: the revolutionary leader must handle the identity transition after victory.\nBut real history is far more complex than theory. Every country\u0026rsquo;s democratization process is accompanied by complicated ethnic relations and cultural conflict. In those relationships and conflicts, individual choice can become secondary. In this sense, it is too arbitrary to blame the historical cycle entirely on revolutionary leaders. People have self-interested instincts, and power has an instinct to expand. Blaming these instincts is useless. Thinking about how to restrain them through external institutions is the proper historical path.\nOrwell\u0026rsquo;s Spirit For those of us living today, the first step toward solving problems is to face them. Progress in life and social change always require people who dare to look directly at problems. They can smell crisis during songs and dances of peace, and return to the value of the individual when everyone else is immersed in grand narratives. Sometimes they are stigmatized; sometimes they are treated as heroes. They are Orwell, Tocqueville, and Tolstoy; Liang Qichao, Chen Tianhua, and Lu Xun. They possess rational spirit and cold conscience. They are intellectuals. Compared with passionate revolutionary youth, society needs intellectuals even more.\nChina\u0026rsquo;s nearly four thousand years of history are filled with violence, blood, and tragedy, including the suppression and persecution of intellectuals. To escape the historical cycle of autocracy and revolution, we cannot lightly say \u0026ldquo;democracy,\u0026rdquo; nor can we hypocritically shout \u0026ldquo;freedom.\u0026rdquo; We must truly face problems and respond to criticism with the greatest tolerance and goodwill. We must give \u0026ldquo;Orwell\u0026rsquo;s spirit\u0026rdquo; a place of its own, so that everyone can express their thoughts clearly. Only then can the ever-rising cost of stability maintenance return to improving people\u0026rsquo;s welfare, and trains to Beijing become less crowded.\n[1] Duan Huaiqing. A Generation\u0026rsquo;s Cold Conscience: Orwell\u0026rsquo;s Intellectual Legacy[J]. Social Science Forum, 2006 (5): 29-41.\n[2] George Orwell, translated by Sun Zhongxu. Animal Farm[J]. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2007 (1): 103-103.\n[3] Ni Yuzhen. Tocqueville\u0026rsquo;s Unique Perspective on Democracy: Democracy as a \u0026ldquo;Social Condition\u0026rdquo;[J]. Sociological Studies, 2008, 3: 79-91.\n[4] Yang Jintao. Huang Yanpei and Mao Zedong Discuss the \u0026ldquo;Historical Cycle\u0026rdquo;[J]. Consultative Forum, 2013 (11): 56-57.\n[5] Hannah Arendt, translated by Chen Zhouwang. On Revolution[J]. Contemporary Foreign Literature, 2007 (3): 171-171.\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20191023/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eIn a certain sense, Orwell was my political enlightenment. When I was in junior high school, my history teacher gave me a thin little book on a lazy afternoon as a reward for improved exam results. The book was \u003cem\u003eAnimal Farm\u003c/em\u003e. That night, after I got home, I read it in one sitting. Although I did not yet understand Soviet history or the struggle between Stalin and Trotsky, this short fable still shocked me deeply. From then on, I began reading works of philosophy and ethics since the Enlightenment, and developed a strong interest in modern left-wing thought beginning with Rousseau.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"Autocracy and Revolution: Orwell's Spirit in the Historical Cycle"},{"content":"To myself four years ago:\nI know that right now you are sitting in an evening self-study classroom, preparing for the gaokao with endless fantasies about the future. Although your recent mock-exam scores have not been ideal, you are still immersed in the glory of having once ranked among the top 500 in the province in the Jiangnan Ten Schools exam, holding on to a baseless confidence.\nYou probably cannot imagine that, a little more than a month later, on June 22, your terrible final score will make you doubt your life. I admit that it took us a long time to let this go. That is why, around this time last year, in a letter to my self ten years from now, I swore that I would get into Renmin University for graduate school. Now the graduate entrance exam is over, and I did not get into Renmin.\nIt is indeed regrettable. The debt from four years ago remains unpaid, and the hope of paying it back in the future is slim. But I have never regretted the big talk I once gave others, because I firmly believe that boasting can make me improve. As the saying widely circulated in English goes: fake it till you make it. Since long ago, we developed the habit of \u0026ldquo;pretending\u0026rdquo;: before we can truly do something, we pretend we can. This is not to prove to others how impressive we are, but to let others push us to become impressive. After all, it is embarrassing when a boast falls apart.\nYou are about to enter a non-elite university that you long looked down on. You will indeed find many disappointing things about it. But none of that can deny the meaning of these four years. Like everyone else, you will make many attempts, some meaningful and some not; make a group of friends, some close and some distant; and develop many thoughts, some left and some right. Some of these attempts, friends, and thoughts will be valuable. Others will be pure wastes of time.\nBut evolution has made us dependent on our environment. Whether we subjectively like it or not, the things we encounter and the environments we inhabit will leave irreversible effects on us. That is why I, now fully aware of this, can calmly reflect on the past during the brief quiet before graduation. We have made many foolish decisions, and we will certainly make more foolish decisions in the future. But that is the trial-and-error process of life, and we should learn to let it go.\nYou may feel that the future is completely uncertain. I feel the same. But I remind myself constantly that this uncertainty is the same uncertainty faced by pioneers across time and place. It is the uncertainty of the Mayflower on the Atlantic, and of gold prospectors crossing the Pacific toward San Francisco. In the next few years, I will spend my life in Shanghai. East China University of Political Science and Law should give me a platform large enough to try. Whether I will eventually live in a way I am satisfied with is not something I can answer now.\nThis may sound repetitive, but I still want to restate the ideology we have held since our worldview first formed at seventeen: always stand on the side of the egg. As time passes, more and more people look at the world through the eyes of the strong. They would rather abandon the axial spirit our ancestors spent thousands of years seeking and retreat to an animal law of the jungle, sympathizing with the powerful. They are obsessed with imperial tactics, geopolitical games, national causes, and calls for military unification. Perhaps they have never imagined that one day they too may become prey for the strong.\nBut we know clearly that the high wall is covered with fine words and lies. That is not what we want.\nThis was originally a boring final assignment for a psychology class. After finishing the handwritten version, I still decided to type it up and keep it. Although it is an assignment, every sentence I wrote is sincere. My future self may betray the ideals I once shared with you, or may turn around and laugh at your foolishness and recklessness. Whatever happens, please just smile it off.\nI forgive all the wrong things you have done. In return, I beg you not to forgive all the wrong things I may do in the future.\nSincerely,\nRespectfully\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20190513/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eTo myself four years ago:\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eI know that right now you are sitting in an evening self-study classroom, preparing for the gaokao with endless fantasies about the future. Although your recent mock-exam scores have not been ideal, you are still immersed in the glory of having once ranked among the top 500 in the province in the Jiangnan Ten Schools exam, holding on to a baseless confidence.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eYou probably cannot imagine that, a little more than a month later, on June 22, your terrible final score will make you doubt your life. I admit that it took us a long time to let this go. That is why, around this time last year, in a letter to my self ten years from now, I swore that I would get into Renmin University for graduate school. Now the graduate entrance exam is over, and I did not get into Renmin.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"A Letter to My College Self"},{"content":"As the Dingyou year gasped like an old man near the end of life, I felt, as usual, that I should write something. With time, my writing has become increasingly clumsy, to the point that I can no longer even come up with a decent title. So I will boldly borrow a line from Bei Dao for now. Why this title? I will explain later.\nOn the last day of the old year, Wuhu finally had a proper haze. In the morning, as I rode alone to school, I could not see the library hidden in the thick fog. There was a faint, almost imperceptible chemical smell in my nose, and only then did I realize winter had arrived. Unlike intermittent ice ages, winter comes every year, sometimes early and sometimes late, sometimes gentle and sometimes fierce. But in its reliability, in the fact that it always keeps its appointment, it deserves some praise.\nThe past year was empty for me, lacking any major goal. So I artificially set myself a few small goals of little real significance. They could add one or two byproducts to my monotonous college life, things I could brag about, and help me avoid the permanent loss of momentum caused by losing direction. Over the year, I passed Japanese Language Proficiency Test N3, passed the written part of the high school English teaching certificate exam, read dozens of books, remembered more than a dozen historical episodes, and took another step on the road to owning a dog. Compared with an increasingly hopeless legal career, these small and painless things added quite a bit of color to what should have been a dull life. They at least gave me something to point to during the routine year-end summary and say, \u0026ldquo;This year was quite full.\u0026rdquo;\nMy relationship with my family has become increasingly harmonious. That is another high-quality product I gained this past year. Watching my parents grow older day by day has not produced much resentment toward time in me. Whenever that thought appears, I tell myself that I too will grow old one day. In that sense, my parents and I are even; it is only a matter of sequence. That makes me feel better. Instead of obsessing over the aging of parents and relatives, it is better to use the present well: make more jokes each day, tease ourselves a little more, and let emotional connection be maintained that way. If possible, I will try to make something of myself in a way that fits my parents\u0026rsquo; values. That would count as another responsibility fulfilled, at least as I see it.\nAfter crossing a second year-end with Shanshan, my satisfaction with and trust in this relationship have deepened. If possible, we probably will not separate. That also brings another unavoidable problem: the weight of life on my shoulders has grown much heavier. In a society where economic distribution is not exactly fair, it is very hard for people like us to support a middle-class family with our own hands. I hope she understands this as early as possible. But no matter how hard life becomes, I will give it everything. This is not motivational soup or a solemn vow. It is simply because life should be lived this way, and no one can raise their hand and surrender.\nAccording to the old heavenly-stems-and-earthly-branches calendar, after Dingyou comes Wuxu. Two sixty-year cycles have passed since the Hundred Days\u0026rsquo; Reform. That was a painful historical story. An attempt to drive social change from within the system failed completely, followed by the execution of the Six Gentlemen, the reactionary backlash of court conservatives, and the fraudulence of Kang Youwei, once the spiritual leader of reform. One hundred and twenty years later, the ghost of the Qing still seems not to have fully left this ancient land. Some of the best and most beautiful things in our old tradition are dying day by day, while wave after wave of stale dregs, revived in the name of \u0026ldquo;rejuvenation,\u0026rdquo; have found new life.\nThe Guo Wengui revelations, the Yu Huan stabbing case after his mother was humiliated, the Hangzhou Greentown arson, the Ming Jingguo resistance case, the RYB kindergarten abuse scandal, Beijing\u0026rsquo;s expulsion of the low-end population, and the coal-to-gas heating campaign in North China: all these events that left public opinion stunned happened with unusual concentration in 2017. I do not know how later generations will judge our era, but I know that fairness and conscience among the Chinese people have not disappeared.\nBaseness is the passport of the base,\nNobility the epitaph of the noble.\nLook, in that gilded sky,\nThe bent shadows of the dead are drifting.\nThe Ice Age is over,\nWhy is there ice everywhere?\nThe Cape of Good Hope has been discovered,\nWhy do a thousand sails race across the Dead Sea?\nI came into this world\nBringing only paper, rope, and a shadow,\nSo that before the judgment\nI may read out the voices already condemned.\nIn 2017, all theoretical reflection bore the fruit of practice. From then on, my political consciousness fully awakened. Standing far away and watching coldly, or turning my face elsewhere and fleeing timidly, cannot change this unreasonable world. If I still hold any hope of creating a happy life for my future children, I must act and place myself inside it.\nIn the Constitution, our name is \u0026ldquo;citizen.\u0026rdquo; What kind of citizen? One who can express independent views without arrogance; obey politics without servility; participate actively in national policy; feel sympathy when seeing the weak, and anger when seeing evil. That is a real citizen.\nIf the ocean is destined to break its dikes,\nLet all bitter waters pour into my heart;\nIf the land is destined to rise,\nLet humanity choose again the peak of survival.\nNew turning points and shining stars\nAre filling the unobstructed sky.\nThose are five thousand years of pictographs,\nThose are the eyes with which future people gaze.\nThat is why I borrowed this line as the title. In another Wuxu year, I will continue walking forward with hope, waiting eagerly for every new dawn.\nThe longing for sincere love, the tireless pursuit of truth, and an irrepressible compassion for human suffering: these three simple but powerful passions govern my life. This was my 2017. I place my best hopes in the new year, and sincerely wish happiness to everyone who has read this far, and everyone who has not.\nEarly morning, January 1, 2018\n","permalink":"https://masonblog.github.io/en/post/blog20180101/","summary":"\u003cp\u003eAs the Dingyou year gasped like an old man near the end of life, I felt, as usual, that I should write something. With time, my writing has become increasingly clumsy, to the point that I can no longer even come up with a decent title. So I will boldly borrow a line from Bei Dao for now. Why this title? I will explain later.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eOn the last day of the old year, Wuhu finally had a proper haze. In the morning, as I rode alone to school, I could not see the library hidden in the thick fog. There was a faint, almost imperceptible chemical smell in my nose, and only then did I realize winter had arrived. Unlike intermittent ice ages, winter comes every year, sometimes early and sometimes late, sometimes gentle and sometimes fierce. But in its reliability, in the fact that it always keeps its appointment, it deserves some praise.\u003c/p\u003e","title":"From the Ice Age to the Cape of Good Hope"}]