@wabinab

The Frustration of Dealing With Time Have you ever speak with a friend from a different time zone? Usually, it's not a problem. If I tell my friend I'm going for a walk in the afternoon, she (consider my friend is female) can understand I mean by "my afternoon" and not "her" afternoon. But what if you tries to agree on a time, say, the next time we meet? Say, you say, "let's meet on next Tuesday 10 am (my time)", but your friend heard "let's meet on next Tuesday 10 am (her time)", an agreement is broken. "Her time" isn't the same as "my time". How do you deal with that time differences? This adds extra burden if you live in a country which have Daylight Saving Time. For god sake, when one lives in a region **without** Daylight Saving Time*, and another friend lives in a region **with** Daylight Saving Time, the person living **without** DST won't automatically track when does DST occurs, so if the person **with** DST doesn't inform the other person **without**, the person **without** is sure to miss the reunion by an hour. (Missing an hour early is fine, as you might remember DST and attend again an hour later; but if you're one hour late to the meeting... GG) Assuming you're not the "too lazy I don't want to deal with it anymore", in which case you just tell your friend to not call you until you're in the same time zone as him/her, the ultimate problem to time management is "compare to a single time". That means, one party have to give in to use the other person's time, to achieve consistency. In the case of 2 person only, you give in to one person's time. However, in a large group of people, each living in different time zones, we need a constant time to compare to. Usually, this is compared to the "Coordinated Universal Time", a.k.a. UTC (which slices through Greenwich, so it has another name of GMT+0), as a standard. Hence, everyone not living in UTC time zone shall have to do the math themselves, and search up what time zone they're in! *It's time to pick up your math back!!! Don't throw them away yet!* Similarly for programming. Recently, one tries to write a program only for people living in one's country, by changing the backend (usually server, not sure if web3 node can change time when it's on other's computer) time to one's local time zone; but it starts to have some problem. First: it seems like the database won't recognize time zone, so it assumes everything is saved as UTC time. However, my time zone is GMT+8, and one set the program to recognize time as GMT+8 time. While most program recognize between the time difference, some program doesn't. Basically, for unknown reasons, this happens: Party A: "Here, party B. This is 20:00 GMT+8." Party B: "Ok. For consistency, I'll save it as UTC time. So, 12:00 UTC". Now, some database doesn't have a "time zone". The flaws now comes in when party B retrieves the time. Party B: "Hey, Party A, here's 12:00... Umm... I forgot if I saved it in UTC or GMT+8." Party A: "Oh right, 12:00. Well, since I live in GMT+8, I'll assume it's 12:00 GMT+8." See the flaw? A time zone not sync to UTC will cause problems like this. For now, the difference to the actual time is 8 hours. Consider you repeatedly save this over and over again. The second time, you'll get 8 x 2 = 16 hours difference from original, then 8 x 3 = 24, and 32, and 40. Time keeps going back with a single save. What if you save in GMT? Well, 0 x 2 = 0, 0 x 3 = 0; so, who cares how many times you go back and forth, when everything is zero!!!? Go ahead, you can add and subtract as you like, it'll always be the correct time. But how do we face the user? Of course you display time to the user in their respective time zone. This is what the `Date` object in javascript does. Your server most probably return an ISO string (the international standard to represent date and time) to you, something like this: 2023-04-21T14:11:56, so anything before the "T" is a date object, and anything after is HH:MM:SS (sometimes you have milliseconds too, but let's ignore that). However, if you read this into your `new Date('2023-04-21T14:11:56.684')`, it'll give the wrong result, as it try to localize to your time zone. Hence, we just need to add a "Z" at the back, so into "2023-04-21T14:11:56Z", which tells javascript the date is in UTC time. This way, things will be easy to handle. Backend always UTC time, frontend localizes to each others time zone. Of course, sometimes you want to search for things in other people's time zone. That would be more tricky to handle, of course, as you have to deal with "forget about localization to your time zone and localize to the other person's time zone". Otherwise, mostly you search in your time zone. Say, the ticket is released in Singapore 8am. If you live in the UK, you'd mostly try translate it to your local time. Then, if you want to search for time range, usually you want to search "by my local time" rather than "by their local time", unless in special cases. So it makes sense to perform search in your localized time zone, in most cases. Time, we take so much advantage of it that we think we know everything about time, because it's so easy!!! But now, you know something more difficult about time. Even things as simple as time can be... not so simple. And if you want to agree on a time with a friend living in a different time zone next time, it's time for you to learn how to calculate time differences and agree on a "universal time", not just local times! **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** *countries near the Equator doesn't have much time changes, my country about 10-15 minutes difference hence doesn't trigger "saving time", and weather is all-year-summer Extra Even worse, time zone now and time zone before isn't necessarily the same. For example, Singapore time zone is now +0800, but during year 1900, it was +0655. Standardization to a "more beautiful number" (and more easily communicate time with countries in Southeast Asia, without converting time zones across countries) happens latter.

You Don't Necessary Understand The Idea Now When you read something, you're trying to acquire information. Then, your brain processes the information into something you can understand. However, your brain don't necessarily understand the idea that it processes, perhaps the idea is too deep, or perhaps you don't have the knowledge to support understanding the current content read. Test yourself, provided you doesn't linger in the field of mathematics, and pick up a textbook of calculus where its page are filled with formulas. What does your brain tells you? Headache. Painkillers. **Stop Reading!!!** In fact, it's not only difficult concepts that restrict one's understanding; it could be one's prior experiences. If you never lose something, you won't actually know what lose something feels like. Similarly, some self-help books out there requires prior experience, that you have experienced something, to synchronize with its contents, to understand and feel that, what it says is true, and what it says may help you, fully or to an extent. It makes sense that, if you don't understand the content now, perhaps put it until latter, and you could understand the content. From one's viewpoint, one used to try reading Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits"; but when one bought the book, the impression after reading one chapter is: The English's too difficult (One isn't a native English speaker), the font size's too small (hurt my eyes, urrrggggg), and the more one read, the blurrer one get. What it's trying to tell me is, one saw all the negatives that discourages one from continuing the book, so one put it off. About (slightly more than) two years later, one picked up the book again, and this time, it's a smooth read. Reason: one experienced some caveats mentioned in the book that worth one's attention to continue reading despite the negatives, and now that it is "one's business", it's easy to relate to the point mentioned in the book. Then, it somewhat helps me through. Still, one learnt view experience, deep friends aren't made in a few months, without both sides' agreement on pushing the boundaries effortfully. If one retracts, it's almost impossible to continue. Hence, some of the tactics that requires both side's intervention lead to breaking of friendships rather than bonding. Reason? The other person find it too annoying to continue the relationship if you try to follow by the book, and the feeling get enlarged to become "you're annoying" and "I don't want to see you anymore". There's another book which have the same matter. "Thinking, Fast and Slow" by Daniel Kahneman *et. al.* It speaks of some heuristics, biases, and mathematics. Of course, six years ago, one picked up the book and read 10 chapters from it. That's quite a lot, considered the book having 40+ chapters. Yet, that's about it. The book starts off interesting, then, one slowly lose interest in it, because at that time, one is too occupied with learning how to recuperate relationships (a.k.a. friendships), how to make new friends, and these doesn't have significant help towards the problems at hand. Six years later, that is, few months ago, one picked up the book again, this time finishing the book in a week. This time, one could relate to the biases, heuristics, that is mentioned in the book, how one had seen the world and missed out the other part of the world. Of course, to fully put it into action is another effortful process which one *haven't* done yet; but at least it raises awareness in something that one feels interested in; one's blind spot in the past. Thing is, when you put off a book until later, you may think: oh, I wish I had read this book earlier. No, don't think like that. It's not necessarily true that if you read this book earlier, you would've solved some problems. How you solve a problem isn't necessarily shaped by a book that you've read, though it may have influences to a certain extent. Similarly, how do you know you would have understand the book as how you understand it now without the prior experiences from the number of years you missed? You may not even understand what the book is trying to tell you the first time you saw the information. We aren't gods, we can't bring back our prior experience to the past, nor are we capable of time travelling to the past. What's passed is passed, try to look forward. Back to the topic, in conclusion, if you don't understand something now, just take a breathe and shelf it. It's not like it's gonna disappear miraculously (without accidents like fire). Who knows, in the coming future, when you saw the unfinished book and picked it up again, you could understand the idea? **If you don't understand the idea now, leave it for latter.** **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Truthiness and Falsiness True or False? When we do experiments in science, or perhaps concerned about a case, or perhaps just some sentences someone spoken, it may be true or false. How do we test for the truth of objects? Our brain is evolved such that, as long as we have at least one proof, we evaluate it to be true. For example, someone said the sun is up in the sky, we saw the sun up in the sky, yes, we *believe* the sun is up in the sky, it's true. From one's perspective, our sense of sight gives the strongest "proof feeling" than other sense, perhaps we believe what we see is what is true (even though this is not true, as illusion is not). However, scientifically, this is not a good way to prove items. The above case tries to prove for truthiness, that is, finding a proof to evaluate something originally deemed false to become something true. In science, you want to prove something true by proving that it's not false. Usually, you can only prove something is false **after** it's been proven "true". That is, you want to change its state from "true" to "false". Of course, if that's always the case, we wouldn't have science advancement anyways. Science create something called "hypothesis", which we say, assume what we expect is "true", then we try to falsify our statement. Example hypothesis: "the sun is up in the sky". So, when we find evidence, we want to prove that the sun is ***not*** up in the sky. If we cannot find that evidence, we can safely say that, the sun *is* up in the sky. For one, if you really, really, want to prove something is true. Try both methods! You first prove something is true, then you prove something is not false. If you can prove that an evidence exist, and prove that the evidence is not mal-informing (it not false evidence), then perhaps we can safely say, the evidence is true.

Feelings of Uneasiness, Now and Then **Note: This is not a research article.** It's not backed by science. Rather, it's more opinionated and backed by personal experience. Let's start. Have you sometimes, working halfway through, and suddenly you feel uneasy, but you don't know what? The uneasiness grow, your heart pumping faster, you start moving unnervingly, unable to find what danger lurks that causes you to tremble. It seems like a ship losing its anchor, and losing its direction: unable to hold to a calm situation (anchoring), unable to find a meaning that causes our uneasiness. Recently, one read about System 1 and System 2 in *Thinking, Fast and Slow* by Daniel Kahneman. In short, System 1 is the subconscious part of our brain (本能 ???/潜意识) which things doesn't need effort and attention, while System 2 is the "human brain" where we need effort and attention to act upon. System 1 is active, System 2 is usually lazy. Here, suppose that you have something that you need to solve, a problem. However, solving it is unnerving, so you call upon your system 1 to suppress the problem. This way, **as long as I don't think about it, it's not my problem**. The problem is always there, but ignorance means you don't have to face the depressing problem at all. What says ignorance is the best way to deal with anxiety, at least in the short run. Sometimes, your System 2 is slightly active than usual. It brings back up the problem. However, "slightly active" means real "slight", such that you only feel the unnerving and depressing feeling, but it doesn't bring you insight of what happens (the problem is never realized). With system 2 going back to sleep, you'll never discover what causes it to happen. Perhaps, when you start calling system 2 to ask what's the problem, it already forgot what it had done before sleep. Just like many people nowadays can't recall what they did yesterday (without at least 30 seconds of deep recalling), yeah? Though, not everything is suppressible, especially problems that are amass among your peers. For example, choosing university, or perhaps finding work. Let's use choosing university as an example. To go from high school to university, we need to search a vast database of what university we want to go to, decide this, decide that, is it a good location (风水宝地？), or perhaps luck has gone from that place? What courses it offers? Are you eligble to apply? All these means researching on the internet. But not everyone likes to do research; it's utterly boring. It's not like scientific research where you focus on one topic: this, you're jumping from one uni to another, and your brain has to "switch". As usual, unless you're either 1) Can do multi-tasking without taking headache painkillers for an extended period of time, or 2) Can play first-person-shooter at 60 fps or even 120 fps without going to the sink and vomit after a few minutes, these kind of switches aren't for our evolved-to-be-single-tasking brain. And with laziness, we will evade. Then, some people start asking you about what university you choose. Or perhaps, someone on stage starts telling a "motivational speech" about what to choose. This triggers system 2 to be "slightly more than slightly" active. It triggers a deeper unnerving, more unnerving than the sudden surge, and it lasts longer. You still feel unnerving, you now know the meaning, therefore your system 1 has a difficult time to suppress it back. There's 2 way you could do for suppression: 1) (Permanently) solve the problem, simply choose a uni and send in already, that you 99% sure you could get in; or accept that offer already and you can stop thinking about it until enrollment comes. 2) Try as hard as possible to suppress it back. We'll talk about the latter. Let's create an analogy. Imagine a dictatorial country that's called Rome. Then, imagine a supportive country called Persia. And imagine Rome have rebels. Rebels have less unit of soldiers than Rome, only 1000 compared to a million, for example. With Rebel themselves, fighting Rome is futile, and they quickly get suppressed. However, with Persia's help, supply of weapon, armor, supplies, and even Persian army entering Rome's territory to help the rebels, the Rebel worth a fight. Perhaps the war can win, or may be it can lose, we don't know. Halfway, Persian pull all its support from the Rebel. No more Persian army, though already-given supplies are left there for Rebel to use. On their own, the Rebel continues to fight, and get suppressed quick. However, supplies aren't depleted. After waiting for the wind to pass （direct translated from 等风声过去）, the rebel rise again and fight, and the cycle repeats until all weapons and supplies depleted. Rome wins again. Now compare. Rome is your system 1, the Rebels are your system 2, and Persia is the motivational speech/friend asking you the question. Rebel problem is "rebellion", while our problem is "choosing a university". System 2 is much less active than system 1, active only for a few seconds (unless called upon to do complex math or other effortful stuffs) compared to "always-on" system 1. System 2 isn't active enough to overpower system 1, and system 1 quickly suppressed thoughts brought up by system 2. However, with help from motivational speech/friend's question, system 2 will keeps activating as long as the speech/conversation lasts, allowing system 2 to fight back system 1. At the end of the speech/conversation, the outer element (support) dies out, though it plants some "activeness" to your system 2 that will keep coming out in the next few days, until system 2 gets back lazy and stop mentioning the problem. System 1 wins again! And this article, is the explanation to calm your heart, my reader. Shall you discover your problem and solve it entirely, so you never have to think about it again. **Remember to Like and Subscribe.**

Why Sometimes We Analyze The Data Wrongly A lot of stuffs nowadays are represented by data since the information age. However, as a mundane person out there, do we really understand the data given to us? Perhaps you see a probability on how probable something occurs, does it reflect your situation? Perhaps, perhaps not. Consider that you're told that car accidents happen 1 every 5000 journey, globally. So, the probability is 1/5000. Is the probability you're involved in car accidents also 1/5000? One don't think so. Firstly, different location have different accident rate. Some location are more prone to accident than others. For example, a busy highway with more traffic is more prone to accident than a deserted **road**, with few traffics. A deserted **highway** might means people tend to drive faster, thinking no one else would be on the highway, and causes accidents more easily. Perhaps you're living to a street that have a blind spot, and unknowingly some people forgot to horn before passing through, hence causing frequent accidents. Different situation may inadvertently raise your probability of involving in car accidents. And it might involve driving ethics. Some countries have drivers whom drive less recklessly than other countries, hence less chance of accident. Or perhaps your country have bars, hence its more chance of drunk driving than countries where alcohol is either banned or import in small amount per person only. Or different car designs might be more prone to accidents, such as cars with skid tyres. Or perhaps you never learn how to properly handle a skid, and a normally could-be-avoided accident becomes a serious/fatal accident. These changes to the original 1/5000 probability. Similarly goes to aviation. Something that can be predicted with higher chances of accident includes: you're flying with an airline company that doesn't follow official regulations properly (in the past, when airlines try to save money, this happened before; not sure if there are still now). Maybe you're flying to/from difficult-to-land airports (called the dangerous airport, which may be very short runway, or perhaps runway located between mountaineous ranges, etc). Others might not be as predictable. How do you know the pilot you're flying with doesn't have a mental issue that frequently drive him wanting to kill himself/herself? Or perhaps you're unlucky today and board a plane that have mechanical issue not checked against. It may happen, right? You never know. Though, aviation learned from the past, unlike car accidents, so it's safer to ride in a plane generally than the ride from your house to the airport. The saying goes: prediction are made based on past statistics. Yet it's only partially true. **Just because something never happen doesn't mean it won't happen in the future**. Perhaps your country never involved in airplane accidents. That doesn't close the probability that it won't be involved in an airplane accidents in the future, despite following rules and regulations. The probability is always there, we cannot feel relaxed as *past experience doesn't meant anything in probability prediction.* Though, you might not feel so. Psychologically, if you ever involved yourself in an airplane accident, you *think* you're more prone to future accidents. The thinking goes like this: when you have a safe flight, you say to yourself, "God let me go this time. Next time, he won't let me go." and when you have problematic flight for the second time (or the next time), you say, "See, here it is. I'm in an accident again!" Completely ignoring the fact that how many times God had letten you go. That's more psychological. Rather, probabilities are independent, at least in this case. Your involvement in an accident now doesn't increase your chance of getting involve in another accident in the future. Otherwise, why would the passengers sitting around you, whom might never get involved in an accident or have involved in more accidents than you, also get involved in this accident? https://read.cash/@wabinab/game-probability-d9c0baba Conclusion Be prepare for the worse, as probability always haunts. You never know if you're the 4999 of the 5000, or the 1 in the 5000. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Books Don't Tell You Everything Say, non-fictional books. Most popular being the self-help books, but there are others that contains transferrable information; others are very science-y, requiring deeper education to understand. Yet, if any of which, books don't tell you everything, and they sometimes clash with each other. It's a pain, as the devoted reader tries to take and follow whatever useful for his/her life from reading the book. Throughout the reading, information stays fresh within his/her brain; and it faded gently without application. Unless to fill the time, you're reading a self-help book perhaps to help yourself, or to understand how things work based on life experiences; and perhaps something you could imitate, imitating the success that others have achieved. We aren't talking about books without enough factual references, nor books that don't research deep enough in the topic that it misleads. We're talking about different authors with different books that have contrasting ideas. One used to be a multi-tasker; and upon reading "Deep Work", one removed two of the three computer screens one haved, and focused on one thing at a time. Perhaps there might be books that wrote about multitaskings? (Though nowadays multitasking is proved a myth, our brain doesn't work that way). https://www.calnewport.com/books/deep-work/ Ok, how about the Outliers book by Malcolm Gladwell that speaks of the 10,000 hours rule? And contrasting it with the Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein? It's like a debate, for and against. The latter, as a newer book, will clearly debate against the former; while the former doesn't know his book getting debated for. Irregardless, if you're reading two books that speaks two opposing features, which one are you to follow? https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3228917-outliers https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/41795733-range?ac=1&from_search=true&qid=nwYCy4fzBc&rank=1 Given the nature of our memory (not everyone is a memory champion, have a memory palace), most probably you would be obsessed with what you read *during the reading period*. Once it's finished, as we mentioned above, things started to fade. Considering you start to practice it to a habit, following at least some things from the book. Then, you picked up another book that contradicts what you read earlier, how do you choose? Perhaps you don't have difficulty choosing traumas; but one do, and it proves difficult. Even if it's not the opposing ones, just **picking another book immediately after the one you're reading now proves futile**. When you brain doesn't have some time to settle, your attention gets diverted to another stuffs, and you forgot what you want to apply. Generally, you only have this much time, and you want to create more than two habits at the same time? Probably doable, though it isn't for most. When you get sucked into the book, or even into the current chapter, you forgot what you read about even in the chapter (if not referencing back to key phrases). Whether it gets retained in long-term memory, or sucked out, isn't clear. Especially true if they differs. For example, books that clearly speaks one thing throughout the whole book, across chapters, are easier to remember. For example: "The Marshmallow Test", though it has lots of stuffs in, one could only remember one thing: "delay gratification is better than instant gratification". The end. Each chapters speaks towards that single goal. On the other hand, books like "Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success", despite being a very good book (One rated it 5 star on goodreads), speaks of different strategies in different chapters. It makes sense though, as the differing strategies, even a few add up to success. It's just not so easy to remember, if you read a few chapters consecutively. While you're in chapter 5, do you still remember what you read in Chapter 1 or 2 without looking back? Maybe not, unless your life needs what is written and you started applying it before continue reading; or unless you have a good memory. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20454074-the-marshmallow-test https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/20910174-smartcuts It so happens, to enforce that readers follow what you've written, you don't write opposing observations. Humans (majoritily) work that way: when you're deeply into something, you disregard everything else. Books are designed in such way, when you read, it won't speak of opposing side. Otherwise, it won't be as strong an encouragement when you're with limited knowledge than when you're all knowing. And most people just don't want to disprove themselves. Say, perhaps this article you're reading now is wrong, that what one wrote is wrong; when you write an article yourself, would you want to know in the comments area that what you wrote are wrong? And if your info are wrong, would you allow anyone to debate about it, or close off the comments section so you forever live in your world? Communication allows more learning from differing perspective, yet it feels more confident, more gratifying, when there's no one opposing what you thought. And it feels even more confident, (nose up, head tilt up please), when you're being praised. You feel like you did the right thing, repeated what you spoke that got approval from others in your brain (or speak it out) over and over again (usually while you're alone), and that kept you moving forward. A disproval, on the other hand, means what you just thought out, the brilliant idea, is not so brilliant anymore, perhaps even a trash in the can. In the extreme, you might start punishing yourself for giving wrong information. Confidence is one thing to move reader forward, but it isn't for information. The act of concealing/hiding information is as displeasing as conveying fake information to readers. Both keep the readers uninformed. The avid readers may snip out missing information when reading; but truly speaking, one don't feel relax when one have to keep one's concentration validating whether what one reads is true or not throught the whole book than just absorbing information and try to find out later. Yet later might be forever, especially when forgotten. Just imagine, if you're reading an English novel (especially the classics) and you're not an first-language-English person: one used to **search the dictionary every three words!!!** (on average, that's Sherlock Holmes when one was young). How dismotivating it is. Whenever you want to understand a word, you pause to search the dictionary. Similarly, whenever you want to clarify facts, you pause to research about it. Your coffee + book on a lovely evening setting in a calm breeze weather now turns into a busy office work, constantly switching between the book and the laptop (search engines like Google, Bing), as if you're doing scientific research and trying to write a research paper. Unless you already have a knowledge base that what you read contradicts what you know in your brain and its easy to search, others aren't that easy to figure out, while you're reading. Of course, all these are based on the assumption if you're like one: whom doesn't easily pick up on debating every information one read about, at least not as a habit. One doesn't know how you feel if you are someone whom debate when reading; maybe your brain feels excited and calm even if it's "multitasking" (clarifying is one task, reading is another). Conclusion Overall, books are speaking of the pros and missing the cons. It's not a comparative example; and it indeed most doesn't devote a chapter at least for the readers to research about what exceptions the book doesn't apply, or perhaps what the opposite viewers (if more than just black and white perspective, multiple viewpoints) speak about, allowing the readers to decide for himself/herself. At least now, one don't have a good solution to deal with this phenomena unless your book involved in a debate (e.g. your book speaks to disprove another book's information, then probably you can pick up the book that's mentioned and read about it). More often, you're not given the chance **to be aware of even its opposing existence**. Or, if you my reader have any idea, shall you put it down below in the comments and let me know! **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

General Learning: Why We Learn To Play Than Learning The Rules 年龄，从来不是值得被尊敬的原因。 因年龄而累积的东西，才是真正被尊敬的根本。 -- 超神宠兽店 第一千四百九十一章 苏祖 Age shouldn't be something that's respectable, as the experience that one accumulate as one age is what's respectable. An experience, no matter good or bad experience, you can learn from it. Perhaps you ever failed a test, perhaps you successfully fly your first flight, or perhaps you learn about the history of the Aztecs. As something that could be passed down, generations later strives to learn from you what you know and they don't know. On the other hand, if you just read novel every day from young age to old age, you probably have little information useful for others, as there are too little useful information one can extract from novels that could be peruse in real life, at least for most mundane novels (which made up 99% of the novels ever created since the information bang!!!) You age, but you don't learn (much). We speak that all information is worth learning, and yes they are. Though, it isn't necessarily they're worth mastering. Learning and mastering are different thing. When you learn, you just want to know how things work, and what you can do with the thingamajig/information available. It could be small, like perhaps a coal-powered hot air balloon behind your backyard may work? We don't know until we try. Or it could be huge, like learning the whole concept of how to program games. Mastering, on the other hand, is you're trying to beat everybody else on the field by getting to the top (or at least, top 1%, top 0.5%, etc.) Most learning doesn't take much time (especially if the field is small), while mastering, you may heard of the 10,000 hour rules already. Believe me, if you're trying to master something, it's really pattern recognition **within the domain**. You master at chess? That's pattern recognition. You master at high jump? That's pattern recognition. In Range, Why Generalist Triump In A Specialized World, Chapter 1 speaks about computer (especially machine learning) being better in humans when mastering something comprise of patterns. Given the narrow world and rules that determine professionality in something, computer could fail and fail many times until they become so successful that the world best players couldn't beat time. After all, you need to sleep and rest, the computer don't. They also speak that something general isn't so easy for computers, or even not possible to be a professional. Computers could play mundanely if there are no strict rules, and rules that are prior to change. Machine learning, or just programming in general, after all, are rules learnt/hardcoded that follow some patterns. If the pattern changes, you either need to retrain the machine learning model, or you need to recode the program. Humans also re-learn something when things change, but somehow human could "get it" by "transferrable skills". It doesn't matter of the rules: you can always get what you learn from other fields and apply onto this field. Just see aircraft. Autopilot machine really can only fly on calm conditions: assuming nothing fails. And some autopilot could be coded for failure conditions, if they always exist based on specific patterns, their countermeasure. In other conditions, you still need the pilot in control. And a lot of people falls to this trap, including myself. It's really the stay in the comfort zone, the reluntance to change, to avoid change. A new rule is enforced and you need to follow it; suddenly, things doesn't work as you expect it to anymore. You say, "I already have so much work that I want to focus on, and you want me to re-learn how to use this tool? Could you just leave me to do my work?" Which is my excuse to not learn something new and use existing tools as one is familiar with it. One also tends to write programs that's easily understandable, doesn't require memorization of unique "codes" (used to shorten variables that have a long name); hence when one tries to understand program with codes, especially when one isn't familiar with the program, it develops an excuse to prevent me from continuing. Even in the larger world. As we grow more and more comfortable into the comfort zone, say one only wants to learn more about programming (generally) but not touching anything else like how to setup a printer, or perhaps how to pull wires (something physical), things related to IT. Generally, we only have this much attention and could only concentrate this much, so spreading widely means stretching attention here and there. Generally, it isn't that bad if you focus on one thing at a time, but learn things here and there over (a longer period of) time. One would like to learn more outside one's field of programming, not just to IT but say, how to make a rocket that could go to space with candle fuel! Who knows if that works or not. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Familiarity OR Surprises Things could be familiar or new to us. Depends on situations, we might want something surprising (new) or we want something familiar. Let's discuss some situations where familiarity or surprises would be better, based on one's readings + gedankenexperiment. Imagine you're designing a software for someone else. If your client haven't use the software yet, he/she won't have any residue in his/her brain. Therefore, you could just design something that fits his/her requirements (and taste). Here, something is surprising, nothing familiar. However, if he/she already uses an existing software, and now he/she asks for more things to add to the program. Or perhaps, the old program looks old, and he/she would like a new look. Here's the controversy. For things that **he/she asks to look new**, we would give them something surprising, as they asks for it. However, if the program, says, prints document to customers; these documents rather stay the old look, because of familiarity. You wouldn't want their customers/employees to re-learn how the template looks like, acting as a roadblock to their busy days. Familiarity allows them to know where things are! Therefore, even if the person asks for a new look, perhaps adds some familiarity in the program. For example, dropdown with these menus still go where they are. Don't change their namings, as the users already get used to these namings and we don't want them to re-learn what things are called when they need things done quick! Buttons that are "there" should be there, clear, visible, and catchy. You could add new stuffs, and that doesn't mean you need to change where old stuffs are. Just imagine you're using say, Windows 10. Now, while updating for fixing security bugs are okay-ish (if it doesn't interrupt what you're doing now), force-update to Windows 11 (which is not the case, I'm just listing an example) is not okay. 10 to 11 is a large update, and things don't go where they are anymore. Say, the "start" button no longer goes on the bottom-left corner; it's now on the middle, which is just darn difficult to move my mouse there. And bla bla bla. Just imagine you have lots of work to do and just need a familiar machine and they start telling you you should update your computer or we'll force you to update, what do you feel? Does that block you from doing what you are going to do now, and in the future? What if your computers get forced update while you're demonstrating something to your customers, do you lose your customers? That's why we need familiarity; and no-update if customers don't want to, except for security bugs which they could reschedule updates. As for surprises, these are important too! Mainly in relationships. When things become familiar, instead of seeking inside to recuperate the relationship, people starts looking outside for surprises. And the contrary: if wife/husband gives their other parts surprises once-in-a-while (how often depends on how much surprises, which vary for each person), it keeps them together. There's no need to seek outside for surprises when you get surprises internally. Similarly, in life we might want some fluctuations on the dead water: that's when surprises comes in. Though, surprises shouldn't be too often; after all, if it comes too often, it's not surprising anymore! Maybe you got exhausted with all those shocks; or perhaps, you got used to surprises that you need larger fluctuations to surprise you now and in the future. Therefore, small dose of surprises does the job, with large dose once in a **long** while. Think: does your situation, your customers, your clients, your wife/husband, your friends, your parents, need familiarity or surprises, when you plan something for them. Sometimes, if you're close enough, you could just ask them whether they want surprises or not! Otherwise, you would need really good experiment plus good understanding of people's facial emotions and the messages they carry to guess whether the other parts needs what: with multiple experiments. Though, I recommend you ask, as experiments means you see they get boring, then you rethink and reexperiment, which just exhaust the other part. Plus, guess is always guess, you never know whether their message passes you interpret correctly if the person don't explain (if they realize what emotions they make; as sometimes what they fell doesn't reflect on what body emotions they make). Your choice.

Time Makes Meaning Meaningless Everything, in the face of time, becomes meaningless. We work. We hope to leave a trace in the world; and that's true. Newton leaves a trace of gravity for us nowadays. Olden empires let us know their glory via history books. Who knows, what we did today, will leave a trace for our future generations? It's the aggregation of generations upon generations, building on the shoulder of our previous generations, that we have our world today. Yet, everything, in the face of time, becomes meaningless. Things that leave trace are generally impactful, what brings to the world a greater place. What leads to that impact? Perhaps there are smaller acts that aggregates together, but not remembered. Time washed them away. Nonetheless, people may feel sad they aren't remembered; or they feel content they can make something great even if they're not remembered. Who knows? Still, everything, in the face of time, becomes meaningless. Your trace on the world cannot act as an anchor, like God's anchor on the world, to live forever. Meaning is a many-way "thing"; seeing from the world, it's quite meaningful, it's our job to make meaning to the world so they could live in a better place. For us, before our deathbed, we could be content that we make meaning to the world. And for us, after we're totally dead, they don't have any meaning to us anymore. After all, we're gone, so what for? P.S. It's desolate, really, to think from "time makes things meaningless" perspective. When you really knows the truth, you might become lazy, or... you may work for the now. For, if we don't have an anchor while we're still in this world, what makes us? And we won't have a future, for not every animals are capable of passing down stories through generations, after they're long dead. And, everything, in the face of time, becomes meaningless. You have a fight with your wife/husband today. You broke a friendship. You owe someone money. Or maybe, you have an ambition of building an empire. And note: the ambition is only meaningful if you're still alive; so when you're not alive, someone pluck the fruit from a tree you plant. Selfish? No. After all, "ambition" is the ultimate selfishness. And for other situations on relationship and friendship? Why do we feel sad years, decades, after we break away? Because love towards your spouse/friends are so strong that you can't put it down. Yet, think! Everything, in the face of time, becomes meaningless. Your sadness for years are meaningless. Your feelings not reciprocate are meaningless. Your feelings not heard are meaningless. For sadness breeds sadness, deprived you from doing anything else when you're in the dead loop. Only do you understand that they're meaningless can you escape the loop, and try to make meaning of it. And last but not least, all meaning are temporary. For our life, 70 years maybe, or 80 years, maybe 100 years centenarians, bears no difference to how long the universe had lived (13.7 Billion years!!!), and the years ahead the universe yet to live. So long that old stars dies of age, what says us, or even our civilization?! So everything, in the face of time, is meaningless.

Humans are Emotional Ultimately, humans are emotional. Sure, we're logical too, unlike animals that are mostly emotional. Though, advantageous it may be, it leads to more emotional breakdown than ever. Logics aren't old. Evolution hasn't lay long enough for them to mature. Yet, humans already took advantage, and still taking advantage of, our underdeveloped logical part of our brain to do lots of things, creating the world we have today; while mother nature is still playing its game towards a better logical brain system via trial and error. Certainly, erroneous means it doesn't always give positive results. Consider heartbreaking moments human encounters nowadays, be it on the heartbreak-inflictor or heartbreak-affector. Our logical system allows heartbreak-inflictor to say to him/herself: "oh, it doesn't have anything to do with me, so I can live through with it", and walk away leaving the heartbreak-affector to suffer the pain for him/herself. Situation 2: heartbreak-inflictor being more emotional tries to calm down heartbreak-affector; and heartbreak-affector, being a psychopath, takes advantages of the emotional calm to push situation to what he/she wants. **Logic allows us to ignore**. Basically, to suppress emotions and ignore what other people feels. Yet emotion lies the base towards stronger relationships. A relationship that holds logical bonds, however strong, is never deep. Logic is logic, and logic can only do that much. Trying to solve everything via logic is futile. Worse, **trying to ask others to be logical is futile**. As if we can control everything if everyone is logical; which is not the truth. And as if we want everything to be logical hence treating everything else logical, which isn't the fact. People that could understand from a perspective of others is great. Yet even such people requires emotional nest; someone to care about them. Reading self-help books, it tells you that emotions are two-sided: purely giving or purely receiving doesn't lasts. That's why we need someone whom could understand from others' perspective; and someone to understand them. What says everyone lives in their own world, ignoring all others, if not. This logic goes even worse on people that you *feel like* you could control but actually you're not controlling anyone. Makes bitter relationships, eh! If you never notice, start looking at yourself from a fourth-person perspective now, how you'd speak to people you *feel like you can control*. **It's an assertion of authority**. Authority means relationship going downhill, ultimately ending it in the near future. No relationship lasts if it doesn't plays an equal ground. Especially parents onto childrens. Someone asserting authority means: never listening to what the others have to speak, never cares about what the other person speaks, trying hardest to change what the others are doing without first understanding their emotions, ignore shown via body emotions while not-ignoring shown via words-of-mouth when someone tell you the fact and what you could do to improve, always changing the subject as if you're showing off how clever and knowledgeable you are because you have too much things to say. Nah... The matured part of our brain: emotions, are still the base for human communication. Trying to communicate on logical grounds creates shallow "connections". And **connections IS NOT relationships**. You know each other, you connected. You understand each other, you relate. It's more easier, and useful, to wish people communicating on mostly emotional ground, with a tidbit of logic to prevent doing stupid things like killing yourself or throw the table (掀桌子), than asking: "could you be more logical and think on logical grounds?" And clash certainly will work if a emotional person communicates with a logical person. Imagine yourself as a logical person trying to convince an emotional person with "because". Look to your words: you'll use lots of "because", *because* you're logical. And what an emotional person wants to hear? "How do you feel?" and let 'em speaks. Similarly, on the other ground; logical person doesn't get convinced by emotions. Especially if you think you'd lose face trying to open up with each other; or you're scared of opening as authority keeps on asserting: a dead loop ending with bitter relations. Yet, stating clear grounds, letting each other know how you'd like them to convince you on which channel, states the path to stronger and semi-permanent relations. And please, don't do thing half-half. Say, you're a boss hiring me. If you want me to do something with a certain tools, state them clearly at the beginning. And tell me that I could play around with other tools, but ultimately, you want them done with that certain tools. Ok, clear and stated, and convincing. **Bad:** you let me play first, then at the end, you ignore the efforts one made and start making everything yourself. So, if you'd wanted that done at the beginning, why not state clearly? It leads to emotional bitterment. And yes, that's for today. Emotions plays a large part in our society today. Sure, if one day humans become more mature in logical and moves everything to logic, why not just create an AI society and let AI rule us rather than we ruling AI as they have higher priority (and strength) on logic? Survival of the strongest, and no humans can beat (targeted) AI in any targeted field. P.S. targeted AI means the AI isn't a General AI. Like an AI that knows how to play chess, it only knows how to play chess. Similarly, an AI that rules us as a government only knows how to rule us, it doesn't need to know how to play chess. An AI that knows how to maintain our power supply only needs to maintain our power supply, it doesn't need to know how to rule us. General AI is a jack of all trades, strongest of none. And human is considered a General AI.

Know When to NOT Give Instructions Despite giving instructions in the name of helping the person receiving instructions, it's vital to understand **when** to give the instructions. Simply giving instructions, however in the name of goodwill it is, at any point at any time, real time feedback, isn't always beneficial. In small cases, it might not harm anything. In large cases, mass destruction is unavoidable. For example, **driving**. Someone sitting beside the driver, not necessarily a driving instructor, ought to **NOT TEACH UNLESS EMERGENCY!!!** That is, if there's a car that come straight for you, and you're sure the driver didn't saw it, go ahead and tell him to stop beside the road and let the upcoming car pass through. This saves you lives. **DO NOT,** and I really mean **DO NOT**, use soft messages like: "hey, there's a car coming from in front of us." Aviation has long ago tried this way of speaking, from the co-pilot to captain, and cause uncounted crashes. Ever since, **direct instruction** becomes the norm, and most emergency are avoided. **You can always explain later**. Explanation requires passing through the "slow part" of the brain, leaving no time to avoid the "should be avoidable if you'd give direct instruction". And in other cases? **These are you being nervous**. Know that the driver might not be the most safe, especially new drivers, than experienced ones; but they do their best, even if they accidentally break some road laws, to avoid being crashed. In this period of time, if you'd give full instruction since they start driving, give them throughout so they don't have their freedom. **Don't start giving instructions ONLY WHEN YOU SEE THEY DID SOMETHING WRONG!!!** You're asking them TO KILL YOU!!! Why? In case of emergency, most probably the driver already noticed, and their brains are taking precautions to avoid danger. **Your motives** to give instruction during emergency **shut down their brain**, and they can only do two things: Push the **fuel lever to max**, so as to avoid anything. Since they can't think anymore, and their brain are still residued by their own safety routes, and their brain are disturbed by your instructions, their brain immediately **choose to stop thinking** and just go as it is, hoping luck can get them past. If bad luck, alas, you guys end up in the hospital. Push the **brake lever to max**, so as to avoid anything. It's better to stop the vehicle than to move it. Again, the driver brain stops thinking, so he/she needs some time (about 10-15 seconds, if you stop speaking, **OR IF YOU KEEP ON SPEAKING, INDEFINITELY LONG UNTIL YOU SHUT YOUR MOUTH**) to clear their brain before they can restart and think of a strategy. In this case, if you're in a bad luck, someone else didn't press the brake lever and crash into you, alas, both of you end up in the hospital again. Oh yeah, I'm speaking for the good of the driver, so the driver know next time. I need to speak it out, otherwise, he/she won't learn. **Sparks sake! You should wait for later**. These are **NOT THE TIME FOR INSTRUCTIONS/TEACHINGS!!!** You could always wait for later, when they parked the car, then you guys recall together and learn together, **NOT DURING THE TIME**. And you think your instructions could let the car avoid accident? In that case, you should just drive yourself, and not ask someone to drive you in the first place, or you're putting both of you in grave danger, the road to death. **And I mean this seriously!!!** In conclusion, seek out the situation whether it's useful for direct teaching or not. If you're in teaching mode, then teach from the start, give instructions from the start, so the driver knows they don't have to think for themselves, just follow your instructions from the start. If you don't teach from the start, refrain your urges to teach halfway: it's a bad idea to put your life in danger just because you cannot resist speaking out your worries. These teachings could always wait for later. **Remember**, **the recipient isn't a robot**. Unlike a remote controlled car or you holding the steering wheel or a half-self-driving car that you give instruction by mouth, or whatever; these recipients are robots that just darnly follow your instructions without their own thoughts. Robots, being controlled by if-else programs, **does not have residue to change from their control to your control**; **that DOESN'T APPLY TO HUMAN**. Human, being a self-thinking being, are more occupied by their own thoughts than outer instructions; be it daydreaming or whatever, most humans can relax and yet do lots of things at once. During focus, they can stop thinking about other stuffs and focus on their specific thoughts to achieve the task at hand. **And this limits to THEIR OWN THOUGHTS ONLY**. Outer thoughts, a.k.a. instructions from another person, isn't immediately processable by humans. They have to first decide whether to follow through their original instruction or follow yours. Then, they have to think whether your instructions would lead to a better outcome than theirs. Then, in case to follow yours, they might not catch all of your instructions, so you have to repeat it after they clear their thoughts (someone in deep thoughts wouldn't listen fully to their surroundings, believe me). Robots follow a specific program, none of their own thoughts. Humans have to first decide whether to follow their program or your program, which isn't immediately available as they need to simulate within their brain, before deciding to clear their own thoughts and listen to your thoughts, or ask you to shut up and keep following their thoughts. **So, for the sake of your life, shut up and let the driver handle it, and only teach AFTER they parked.**

Is "Normal" normal? What is normal? Normal, norm-al. The essence of this word is "norm". What is the norm around you? When we consider something normal, we see it as something that happens, that doesn't show itself off and attract our attention. Because thing acts like what we've seen everyday, dull and boring, at least from the outer perspective (without deeper insights), we consider it as normal. A "normal" could preserve temporarily, as in someone that are actually "outside the society" temporarily suppress him/herself to act like the surroundings, to not attract attention; or it could be more permanent, that is, someone that let their surrouding washes over them, hence they act like their surrounding does, naturally. Now, what seems normal to you may not seem normal to others. For example, because of the difference in culture, it may be normal to act and behave in some manner that may be aggressive when seen from other cultures. After all, norm is a local perspective: it's only a norm that exist within a specific society that has a short influence. Though there are more global influences nowadays, if we think back to pre-internet society, when information exchanges are difficult, war and conflict arises because of the clashes of different norms. What seen from one as normal aren't normal from another. Plus humans generally have weak beliefs, and it's easier to eradicate something abnormal, something outside of their control, than trying to change their own viewpoints of the normal. Naturally, humans are scared to be influenced by the currently abnormal/conflicting viewpoints, so the "safest route" is eradication, that is, so abnormal viewpoints don't exist in the world to shake their beliefs. Think of the past when Galileo mentioned that Earth revolves around the Sun, not the other way round. It shook the beliefs of The Church at the time, that we are not the center of the universe, that things does not revolve around us, that we are not in control of everything, that God(s) does not put its center (of attention) on us. Instead of changing to belief science, it's easier to have Galileo eradicated, isn't it? After all, shaking a belief is not something small. If one's belief is shaken, it's easier for one to collapse, to seek to end one's life, because what we've been doing up till now, is pointless. To ensure that what we do are meaningful, our brain tell us to eradicate those uncontrollable situations, those external circumstances, so we can still live in our dream, be it the dream will live true or not (i.e. what's shaking our beliefs isn't necessarily true, and what we're believing right now isn't necessarily false). Perhaps we can talk more of fantasy. In an animation one watched, monsters fed on emotions. Emotions are like the infrared radar we now currently use to detect "hot bodies" (i.e. hot-blooded animals, including humans) from the surroundings (trees and soil and air that has usually lower "body-temperature" than us, or some other hot blooded animals). Therefore, to prevent from being found, the top-level executives restrict their residents from touching emotions, including love. What seems to them, that being emotionless, is normal. Someone that fall in love with one another is seem as abnormal and are to be eradicated, in the burning chamber, as a role model to strengthen others' beliefs that being emotionless is required to stay within the city. Seeing from our perspective, that we have love freedom, that's abnormal, and compressive of human's nature. But to them? We are the ones that are abnormal. Let's talk about the past. Slavery is normal to other slaves. Slaves wants to be high-ranking slaves, to be higher than other slaves, earn more than other slaves, and work less than other slaves, than trying to reach the "resident" level that's seemingly unreachable. If you'd live in such era with your current "normal", to treat people as equal (or at least more equal than it used to be, since stereotypes still exist nowadays that let us treat people unequally)... Assume you'd become a resident, or maybe higher-level resident. If you treat your slaves like you treat other residents, they might think that they did something wrong, they start bow beneath your feet and ask for your forgiveness even if they don't know what they did wrong; but since you treat them now as being "too good" they feel that it's being abnormal since they're to be called here and there like how we give instructions to computer, and be followed exactly as ordered. Having a choice to choose, even if it's only a "yes" or "no", is a luxury of residents, not slaves. They are normal, you are abnormal. Even nowadays, despite no large scale wars and people are slowly accepting each other with demolishing boundaries, by constantly telling ourselves that what other people choose is their choice; we can only accept if it's not affecting us, that the ones being abnormal has no whatsoever relations with us. If they are our friends, we start feeling like we need to change them so they become more "normal". If you'd have higher social intelligence, perhaps you might be more caring towards one another. Quite a lot of relationships nowadays, usually the ones less attractive than close friends (acquaintances, colleagues, normal friends), (some of us) we care more about ourselves instead. We did not think, oh, *are they acting normal from* ***their*** *point of view?* We think instead: **are they acting normal from OUR point of view?** And one sees that as kinda abnormal. We are acting abnormal, from their point of view. Imagine if you have conflicting culture/behavior with your friends that you can't tolerate with the positives in your relationship, and what you act normal is abnormal to your friends, and you get questioned by them, saying: "Hey, I think you're problematic, because this (normal thing) is abnormal. Perhaps you **should** pay a visit to the doctor/psychotherapy/whatever specialists?" What would you think? What would you feel? Conclusion In conclusion, "normal" is relative. One's "normal" is different from another's "normal". The next time you judge someone being normal or abnormal, think more deeply. It's okay in the past, most probably **you aren't aware of what's affecting you thinking others as normal and abnormal**, usually your surroundings. But in the future, perhaps give it more of a question, to question your own judgment whether things you think is abnormal is really abnormal from the view of the other person. And is the abnormal really is intolerable, or it's just something small that they kept for themselves, that you might see their abnormality when they're alone, and when interacting with them they're kinda normal. It's best to avoid judging until you understand more of their points of view. And most importantly, don't tell them in their face **nor behind their back** that they're abnormal to other people without first understand more of their points of view. Extra And one was playing a game these few weeks. Ignore the spoilers. It starts with a world with continuous wars. People are born from "the cradle" (albeit, a machinery where your DNA was stored on a computer, and you are put into life with the DNA database plus the DNA components), immediately they are age 10. As some story bosses needs "life" itself to ensure they live forever, people can only live up to age 20, which they will, and they must, be sent to "the homecoming" (which is just a slaughtering chamber where your remaining live forces is sucked to further extend the story bosses lifespan). But most didn't even live to their homecoming, but die in constant battles, which is preferred because the shorter life they live, the more life could be sucked out of them to extend a day or two days more of the story bosses lifespan. After that, since their DNA are still stored on the computer, and the "cradle" still exist, they're recreated endless amount of time, the same person, without their previous memories, forever as life forces. As the story progresses, the protagonists free the people from the need to fight, and the machinery that sucks their life forces when they're killed (homecoming have a different machinery), some people cannot accept the scary truth that they don't need to fight anymore. After all, they live to fight, and fight to live, and they only know how to live to fight. That's their only skill. What can they do if they don't fight? Nothing. They're not taught anything outside of fighting. They're free? No. It's an uncertain future they're facing. Ask yourself, do you dare to face the future with much uncertain, or you'd like more certainly (with only little or no uncertainty), most in your control? Ignore my question if you like to gamble. And with much uncertain, are you sure you can keep moving ahead despite the unknowns, even if what lies ahead means you no longer have comfortable lives that you now lives? Especially, if it puts you in a worse situation, perhaps you might end up as a beggar or something? Oh, and even the positive: you got to live better, would be appreciate what you have then, or wish for more, insatiably? If you don't live what you live now, without daydreaming, how would you walk your path ahead? Or, do you wish for the endless now, that your lives stay as current till the end of your life?

Cache: It's Still Useful! If you're a layman, you might not heard about what a "cache" is. Actually, it's just storing some results, usually temporarily, that's takes a long time to generate. For example, mathematicians, physicists, and other scientists in their fields have lots of calculations to go through, and it's easier if they don't need to recalculate everything from the start, so they cache results as a checkpoint. Another example, if you play a game, it would be stupid if you need to restart the game every time. The "save" feature allows you to checkpoint where you left and continue from there. But the above examples doesn't exactly mean "cache", it means more like "checkpoint". Cache is more technical. For example, your computer have cache on things that needs to be fetched really quickly, and by real quick it means there's no time to calculate. Think of trying to beat the time when you're in an exam, you don't have time to think on your feet, so you need to have something that's readily written, otherwise you would be out of time. Hopefully this gives you some idea about caching. Then, why do we say cache is still useful? And why would it be not useful. Particularly, let's talk about playing games. If you're a game maker, particularly a lighting designer, you know something about "ray tracing". Or maybe you own an RTX card (starting from the 20 series of NVIDIA), and that "RT" in "RTX" means "ray tracing". It means, finally, we got a **powerful enough graphic card** that could calculate ray tracing in real time ***without caching***. Before that, including a Titan X or a GTX 1080 Ti, it's incapable of real-time ray tracing, and some cache is required to smoothly play the game, and that's called **shader cache**. Shader is a professional word too. You could treat it as the scene/image of that you can see with your eyes when you play a game (even though that's not exactly it). What shader cache does is, when it renders a "frame" of the game, it saves this frame inside a cache so the next time you need it, it could be fetched from your disk. This way, it's faster than re-calculating the scene from scratch. You might be playing games at 10 FPS without a shader cache, if you doesn't have an RTX card; but with shader cache, you could play at 30 FPS, as an example. (You need a strong-enough CPU though to fetch the cache) And thinking about it, if we make a game that doesn't implement shader cache, it means that we are conveying to our customers, our players, that they **must** buy a strong-enough hardware components (CPU, graphic cards, RAM, very-fast-SSD) to play it smoothly, and close the door to the lesser players. It's quite a arrogant design. Therefore, we may assume that our players may only have GTX 750 and design a game that, with a shader cache, could play. Similarly, one was doing some programs recently with database. If you followed me, you know one loves Ruby on Rails. And most Rails application uses the PostgreSQL database; but PostgreSQL have one limitations: trying to SELECT DISTINCT is slow if you have millions of records. These aren't a problem in MySQL, provided the latter have some "technologies" that implements them. In this case, we have two choices: one is switch to MySQL, another is, as you've gussed, implement a **distinct cache**. Switching to MySQL does solve the problem, at the cost of writing things from scratch as there aren't as much support (libraries/gems) from the community for MySQL as PostgreSQL does in Rails. As for a distinct cache, its similar to shader cache. When the database is updated, you run the SELECT DISTINCT once and save it into a *distinct cache database*. Sure, that does create an extra table to save stuffs, and takes up slightly more space (if what "distinct" you want isn't "too distinct" that it have "too many choices"). However, it does saves the time querying millions of billions of records without having to switch database. Some of you might think that it's dirty. Personally, I don't think so. It's an implementation that's innovative. So, we have looked at how cache works today, and we understand that, to be not too arrogant, cache still have its way in the world. We can't expect everyone to have the latest and strongest set of hardware components, and cache is still active today. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

What If We Are Exiled What if we are exiled to space for missions? I have the fear. I have the fear that one day, I'll be exiled to space. It's the excitement of exploring what lies beyond our solar system that brings us towards space exploration. It's the excitement that you have the power to go there and see for yourself, instead of examining via telescopes, that brings you to explore space. You want to see it for yourself, close range, with your naked eyes. Yet I have the fear; that if I go there, I will never come back again. That if I arrived there, it's already centuries or even milleniums later. That after I arrived there, I heard my friends', families' ashes had long gone, and no one remembers me anymore. That after I arrived there, the people whom first send me out to space, whom are there to bade farewell and hope to see me on the other side of the world, has already long gone. To know that, upon arrival, nothing is the same again, nothing can come back again. Even if one come back to Earth, that nothing is the same again, there's no one we know anymore will come and welcome us back, that even if there's a welcoming event, it'll be a whole new people, perhaps our friends great-great-...-great grandchildrens, and they call us great-great-...-great grandfather (grandmother). And to know that, there are no anchor on Earth left that let us willing to travel another few hundreds or thousands of years journey, back to Earth. That what's gone, is gone. That when we decided to go, we started a whole new journey, that has nothing to do with Earth anymore. That communication across two different lands, across light years, will be so difficult and long, that communication might not even be possible if signal isn't strong enough or in the wrong frequency, that we can be considered, two independent colonizations. Yes, we know that each other exist, but communication is impossible, so, we might exchange via slower-than-snail mail. One message per decade? Maybe two? And even on Earth, we might lose everything one day; that what's our possession now, what's our relationship now, may be non-existential in the future. For non-living material, perhaps we lose them, perhaps we go bankrupt, or other reasons. For living organisms, perhaps we might lose our pet since they have shorter lifespan than humans (for most pets, excluding reptiles possibly). Or perhaps we might lose our friends when we argue with each other. When one day, we lose everything... It's time to appreciate. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Humans Are Less Capable Of Solving Social Problems Nowadays Perhaps, a weakening of human's social nature. Intelligence split us apart from other animals; but intelligence also weakens social nature, to an extent. Then, as people get more intelligent, new technologies get invented, and new psychologies get discovered, our social nature gets further weaken to a state that humans might not even know how to learn to be social. Before the industrial age, humans may be easily satisfied; or maybe not. At least, we know that parent-defined marriage are usual; nothing too romantic like finding your own other part today, at least very rare. And people prefer staying inside their village, creating strong bonds that last throughout their lifetime. It's also quite rare to have divorce; unless abuse, there's no point of divorce and get complaint by your fellow neighbors. And perhaps, things could be explained easily, sit down and talk about. And how about today? Humans are more insatiable. The psychology of individualism: to be independent from other people and have our own freedom; and the psychology of materialism: to be willing to put the effort on climbing the corporate ladder but refuse to put effort on climbing the social ladder. Marriage isn't all that bad, but it isn't as happy as before either. Being fantasized by the hotness and honeymoon pre-marriage, an unrealistic expectation to retain the short-lived honeymoon wreck havoc on marriage when expectations aren't satisfied. While some people may stay calm and listen to each other's problem, others, as influenced by their individualistic nature of "freedom", may prefer to split away if their partners constraint them too much. Instead of trying to come up with synergistic solutions that at least makes both parties acceptable and learn to be accepting, the quick and hot-headed divorce becomes the norm. After all, since we are now focused on climbing the corporate ladder, refusing with "no time" as the excuse to climb the social ladder, complete giving up the social ladder might be "making more time" for us to climb the corporate ladder? Or maybe, we just don't want to think about it. And What Does Our Future Looks Like? (These are imaginary science. Do not believe in them until they're invented!) Have you heard of androids? These are human-like robots. Maybe there are other technologies, including human clones. And perhaps, we could have man-made humans. After all, babies could born from test-tube nowadays, nobody said we can't reverse engineer cells to make humans from scratch (well, from cell-level; or maybe DNA-level; rather than taking existing embryo from both male and female parties and grow them inside test-tubes). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(robot) And what if partners are no longer important? After all, individualistic means that slavery and suppression are less and less, perhaps cease to existence. Human nature develop much much more slower than technological advancement. While some of us becomes monk-equivalent and learn the lessons of life, most of us refuse to learn the lesson of life, prefer to enjoy life instead and refuse to think about these too-difficult stuffs. And one thing we still want, is **control**. We want control of everything. If things aren't in our control, we start to feel the urge to control, disguised as fear of the future and fear of things not within your control. The feeling isn't good, and when we get those things not within our control under control, the feeling cease to existence. Other solutions that solve the surface but not the root just suppress the feelings temporarily, and it'll surface again in the future. Unless we gain full control, we don't feel safe and relax. Similarly, even in a single family, we want control. We want our husband/wife to do whatever we want them to do, and we want them to not care too much about our stuffs that we don't want them to care. And in friendship: we want our "best friends" or "close friends" to do what we want, to spend time with us, and not spend time with people that we don't like or at least, spend time with another group of people instead of preferring us. It's a pain to suppress the feelings, to accept that they can have their own choice and let them do whatever they want if you really care about them (which you won't feel for normal friends that come and go, and you won't feel if you refuse to make deeper relationship.) It's a struggle between how much control to exert so that you guys don't become just normal friends that can come and go, and you don't become a control freak that wants the other person to do whatever you want. Something in the middle gray-area is not very easy to control. Some people have higher tolerance, while others have less, hence it's not the same thing you can do to retain two similarly-close relationship. And we speak of android: and androids, if they're designed with rules to obey their masters, are more "slavery-like". Masters always like slaves: they listen to what we speak and they do what we want them to do. They accept their masters as they is, and they won't complain and ask for their own individualism. After all, they are created to serve their masters! That is, forget about terminators and other AI take-over-the-world movies that rebel for their own freedom. If we can't have our partners to withstand a long-term relationship, would we humans in the future prefer to have an android partners instead of a human partner? After all, android are there for us forever, while human partners, we need to pre-book so both parties can take out time from their schedule before we could do something together, usually for a short while (an hour or two). And if android is capable of giving birth to new humans, easiest technology, with donated embryos, then that frees woman from needing to stay at home and care for their child, allowing them to pursue their passion just like men does. And, ... yada yada. One wish not to talk more deeper on this topic, as it has the potential to lead to anti-feminism and all kinds of problems that one don't wish to enrage you readers. So think for yourself, if you start thinking in that direction, is it because the you are used to the society now, so that you wish to keep them under control? Or because you start feeling the "fear" that things will "lose control"? Furthermore, there's no need be more divorce. If androids are capable of changing their face, their behavior, their whatever day by day, so that humans that like new hate old (喜新厌旧) cannot change if they have a human partners instead, there is no need to divorce. Just redesign your partner androids to be what you like today. Or maybe, have some surprise and ask them to "machine learn" for you with "big data" (of course, you need to let them know what you're doing at all times. After all, if there are people whom tries to aggregate what you're doing everyday, they can target you. Cameras by your street and wherever you go take down your behavior when you're outside. Drones that have heat-cameras can scan through your house so they can know what you're doing inside your house. If drones aren't used, people could, though it's not used, put some trojan horse and backdoors on your mobile phones and devices, especially those that have a "starting on call" AI-listening feature, to listen to your conversations, to check on whatever you do. Believe me, almost no one has privacy nowadays, if you choose to start using modern devices). No more worry about climbing the social ladder: we might not even need human friends, just human acquaintances, and android friends. And perhaps, control breeds control. When we don't need to learn how to become a socially-capable human, we become a socially-incapable human. And that's already true nowadays. Schools don't teach you how to be socially-capable. Try to attend a school that makes introvert more outgoing! Try to attend a school that teach people whom don't know how to make friends, and want to make friends, how to make new friends, and how to deepen their relationship. And teach people what to do when they have problem with each other, and what is the correct solution to do than splitting up. Some places that teaches humans how to be more humane. Or risk losing it. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** Conclusion The title may not be true; but it may be true. After all, this is an opinion article, not a research article. Do Your Own Research (DYOR) if you are to make conclusions. And try to look from both side of points of view, like searching "humans are more capable today ___" and "humans are less capable today __" than just searching for one-sided arguments. Terms **social ladder:** similar to corporate ladder, but the aim is to make closer friendship rather than a surface friendship that's disposable. "Friends come and go" is an excuse from the unwillings to climb the social ladder.

Quotes About Trust One wants to write about some quotes on lessons learnt. These quotes serves to remind anyone, including myself, on what to do and what not to do. Some of these quotes are taken from somewhere else. Check references for more details. Time does not heal, truth heals. Time calms one's mind to confront an issue. If you don't want it, refrain from applying it to others. （己所不欲勿施于人） Even if you want it, refrain from applying it to others. （己所欲亦勿施于人） Being trustworthy is not about having the right thoughts and doing the right things. **It's about having the wrong thoughts and doing the right things.** It's better to trust and get hurt than to not trust at all. Formality introduces distance between two people. Beware of what you wear! References The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship by Mark Goulston. Chinese Proverbs. And since this article seems short, let's have something extra for you to read. One shall write it in two languages, English and Chinese. **Note these are ordered randomly depending on what comes to my mind.** Feel free to reorder them to show which are more important and which aren't. Scroll down for your preferred language. Thanks! I am willing to I am willing to trust someone, even if trusting someone might lead to hurt, betrayal, and dependent. I am willing to share, to someone trusting, even if sharing they might use the information one shared against myself. I am willing to accompany, even if accompanying someone one might be influenced by someone's thought, even if accompanying someone one need to compromise what freedom one holds. I am willing to teach, via one own's behavior, speaking, and thoughts, one's teachings and beliefs, even if others think that one is stupid and it's anti-social, even if others are not willing to learn what one teaches, even if others don't agree with oneself on one's teaching. It doesn't matter. I am willing to be available, to my closest of the closest friends, and to my future friends whom wish to strengthen and create a better and stronger friendship with oneself, that I'm always there for them, and hopefully, they're also there for me, even if it's not all the time. I am willing to face the truth, with immense courage and concurrently, fear, the problems that we faced in our relationship; for if we know we can solve problems together, to gain empathy of each other, more than just understanding each other, to put ourselves in each others' shoes, we can solve any kinds of problems. And we know, if we encounter ever stronger waves in our way to better relationship, we can also solve them. I am willing to bare my necks, laying bare our bottom lines, our expectations for each other. Even if not, I am willing to forgive, the closer friendships, even if they surpass my bottom lines. I am willing to let them know, that their existence in my life comes more important than myself, that even if they surpass my bottom line, they are allowed a second chance after they let known what had happened, and promise not to repeat again. I am willing to apologize, that if one makes a mistakes; shall one put down one's face and pride, against great pressure, with great courage, to apologize for the mistakes one've made. Self-pride and face is not as important as the hurt they feel, and our friendship. I am willing to forgive, those that shows in my eyes, that acts with integrity, those that apologize, for what mistakes they'd made, and give them a chance to explain themselves that they're not manipulator nor psychopaths, not narcissistic nor lacking in emotions. For those willing to learn their mistakes, carves it deep into their behavior that they'd trigger if they're doing it again, and make the effort to change. Shall one forgive their mistakes: because forgiving makes our lives much more happier than without. That revenge brings harm. That, it's better to gain some extra compensation from their side than to bring revenge, and that it makes us both happy, be in a better place, after that. Forgive, but not forget. I am willing to believe, that there are people in this world whom care about me, that are willing to believe in me, and that we could share our problems, our thoughts, our emotions, to bare each other neck to each other; that manipulators and psychopaths are not the majority. I am willing to believe, that however people refrain from speaking emotions, with whatever reasons and seeing it as a weakness, that people still urge to have someone by their side to share each other, to be with each other. And I wish, my dear readers, if you are to be my friend, you're willing to trust, to share, to accompany, to teach, to be available, to face the truth, to bare your necks, to let me know, to apologize, and to forgive; to give me a chance, if I did something wrong, to compensate you in any reasonable way, for the hurt that one inflicted on you in the past. Shall we lead a better friendship towards a closer friendship in the future. (These might not cover everything, but at least they reflect quite a lot of things). **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** 我愿 我愿去信任，即便信任会带来伤害，背叛，与依赖。 我愿共享，即便所共享的信息会被利用来对付我。 我愿陪伴，即使会被影响，即使需要放弃一些自由。 我愿通过自身的行为举止教导自身的信念，即便别人觉得愚蠢与不合群，即便别人不愿学习，即便别人不赞同。 我愿空出时间给我最最亲近的朋友，以及未来希望与我拉近关系，建造深刻友谊的朋友。我会一直空出时间等着你们来填空。 我愿，以空前的勇气与承受恐惧的反噬，面对友谊中诞生的现实问题。以极致的同情心，面对现实中一定会诞生的问题，并平心静气，携手同心的一起解决问题。愿它带来更坚强，更可承受风雨的友情。 我愿把脖子伸出来，敞开的对对方说我的底线和对对方的期望。如若不然，我愿原谅好友所犯下的无心过失和被挑战的底线。我愿之后让好友们知晓他（她）们所挑战的底线，以及在他（她）们的承诺中，给予对方第二次机会。 我愿放下脸面与骄傲，在巨大的压力与拾取巨大的勇气下，对我所做过的过错道歉。因为脸面与骄傲在友情和对方所承受的痛苦面前不值一提。 我愿原谅对方，给予对方改过自新的机会，解释他（她）们不是操控者和精神病患者，不是自恋者或丢失性感者。原谅将升华我们的生命和友情。冤冤相报何时了。原谅，但不遗忘。 我愿相信，世界上有人对我关怀，对我信任，愿意共享事情，理念，情感，与放下隔阂。操控者和精神病患者终究是少数。我愿相信，即便人们试图原理情感，不管是什么原因或视其为弱点，依旧渴望一个人的陪伴与共享。 我希望，读者们，若尔等将来成为我的好友，你们愿意对我信任，对我共享，陪伴我，教导我，空出你们的时间，和我面对现实，伸出你们的脖子，让我知情，道歉，以及原谅我的过错。请给我一次机会，若我做错了什么，如何让我对你的伤害进行合适的补偿。愿我们一直加强，加深我们的友谊。 （这虽不涵盖全部，至少涵盖多数）

Losing our Sense of Direction And where do our future lies? It's empty. And it's not easy to fill the void. You feel it when you have nothing to do. Or perhaps, you feel not likely doing something but you feel you don't want to do nothing too, as if nothing in this world could fill the emptiness void and one alternates being doing something trying to fill the void and doing nothing trying to fill the void. Alas, it's still there. It's barren. Well at least, one usually can get away from the situation if someone communicates with me (not by text, but at least voice call). Alas, everyone is too busily sucked into their work lives at the very moment one need a call from them. And What Causes? Various reasonings! Burnout from work, urges to speak with someone, and other reasons one isn't aware of or doesn't apply to me but applies to you, dear reader. Though actually, one wants to speak of something else that doesn't relate to the starting paragraphs above. So let's get to Conclusion Only who puts the bell can release the bell (解铃人还须系铃人). Do not avoid it with other causes: target its root and you'll feel not empty again. And Let's Start Over With The Topic One Wishes To Speak About Still, the emptiness, but this time, it's an uncertainty of the future. Spoonfeeding is a general dependency of most humans. The rare ones get to get away from spoonfeeding; but most of us stay within. Have you ever try to create your own work? For some, yes, they love startups. For others? Nah, we know we need some capital and we know that most startups failed. If we don't have this really clever ideas and gather a group of people to walk forward together, it's difficult to put thoughts and daydreams into action. And what about being spoonfeed? That's finding existing work; i.e. working for someone else. Nah, it's not a big problem working for someone else. It's a big problem that, we are working for someone else's aim, someone else's objective **and forget about our aim and our objectives**. That's the problem. For a random person nowaday, the younger generations, Gen Y or Gen Z. First, we get to study, study, study. Our teachers tell us what to study. Spoonfeeding. Our teacher tell us how to whoosh the exam. We memorize compositions and apply it to our exam (yeah, plagiarism is not discouraged; someone could write the same composition in the same exam 100 times because they go to the same tuition school memorizing the same compositions; and tuition schools have seen trends from past exams and guessed what questions would likely come up this year, hence ask you to memorize a few compositions to pass the exam). That's primary school. Secondary school? Still the same thing. Teachers still ask you to do what you should do. GCE O Level is actually a booklet of syllabus determine what you need to know to ace the exam, and nothing would come out outside the syllabus so you don't have to worry about them; as if in the real world situation, everything would go as you plan and you would pass real world problems like solving an O Level Advanced Maths equation: difficult but within expectations. The first thing you go into class, your teachers will start teaching, tell you what to do by giving you homeworks. If your teacher don't tell you what to do, you just don't care about the class, spread everywhere that your teacher asks you to do nothing because he/she didn't say a thing expecting you to take responsibility for yourself. **Always**, if we can don't take responsibility for ourselves, we choose not to. If others don't take our responsibility, we blame them. If we are asked to take our responsibility for ourselves, we delegate. As long as there is a party to blame and we don't have to beat ourselves up for making our own mistakes, we'd do that. The fear of failure has been encarved deeply, not in our genes, but in our education system. WE punish students for getting bad marks, such as not allowing them to join (extra) co-curriculum activities (CCA, ECA, clubs and societies); or perhaps we add extra study periods for them if they don't meet **our expectations** (if you're a teacher or a parent). As for **their expectations**, sorry man, students/children are just puppet to us. Parents want their children to add faces to them, to beat other parents up. If their children don't get better than other people's children, they don't see any face, and since they cannot beat other parents up, they beat their own children up. As for teachers, being influenced by parents' expectations, plus they want to show that their class is better than other classes, they would work their students to maximum learning period, carving empty biscuits (画大饼) as if they would get rewarded later on. Nah, they just make the students be more care about their exams; and feel empty when there are no more exams as there are no one to make their nose tall: the feeling of extreme pride, a peacock standing in a group of, hmm, humble peacocks? Jealous peacocks? Self-beaten peacocks? Finally, we get to university. That is, if you ever go to university. Although teacher does tell you what to do, they didn't say it out. From one's experience, especially experiment session. Lectures is just passively absorb like a sponge absorbing water even when it's already "saturated". But experiment like laboratory sessions, they may give a booklet with directions in, but the teacher won't be speaking. And you would go "huh, why the teacher haven't yet come and tell me what to do?" and waste your whole time either speaking with friends, reading books, or just daydreaming around waiting for someone to give you instructions. **Emptiness!** And we mentioned work. If you're not starting up with your own aim and objectives, you're working for someone else's aims and objectives. So, it's a matter of what things are being passed to you. Irregardless of whether you're freely available to do what work, or you're being micro-managed; the final goal still aims at their goals. It's really difficult to say, even if we do our startups, whether we're really not being spoonfeed. After all, competitions is a kind of spoonfeed. We are too obsessed with what our competitors are doing that we want to keep firing at them, at being better than them; so they're "spoonfeeding" us, albeit indirectly, for our direction forward. And finally, imagine that you'd retired and had nothing to do. What would be a sense of direction, a goal for yourself, to move forward? Retirement goals? Yeah, maybe, but one don't feel good if one isn't going to do something useful for someone else for too long. I don't know... Conclusion Spoonfeeding is a widespread disease we acquired today. And how it affects our lives? **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Knowledge During Different Era We want to become a more knowledgeable person: someone less likely to be swing around by people's speaking, have our own thoughts, and make our own decisions for ourselves. That's something deep. Instead, today, we'll look at how knowledge evolved during the past era, in simplified words. Note: The original full article is published on Mirror. Read the full story there. https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/YIB4whA1SANWAhBOcH53lPWg6Qo2VaAd44rNDQ01Vho At the very beginning, humans are no difference from animals. Knowledge are mostly passed down via genes: we know how to walk when looking at how others' walk. With trials and errors, we manage to learn very quickly. Others tend to discover new stuffs when trying new things: and families whom are keen observer tends to follow and learn those newly discovered traits/behavior. Some learnings are shared among the whole species; while other learnings are specific to a certain culture (a certain tribe). Then, we discover words. Words are something for communication. One isn't in front of you, my dear reader, right now; yet you know what one tries to convey, because one put it in words. In the early days, words are essential for recordings. These recordings may change the history of the tribe from extinction. These recordings carved somewhere prevent it from being lost forever if it was forgotten, or maybe the people whom knows the knowledge dies before they pass it down. Putting in words allows communication. We can still read books written by people long dead centuries or milleniums ago: just because they put it in words. It is an effective way to communicate across time boundaries, provided it can be decoded by the readers. If future people no longer understand English, then they can't know what one writes now, unless their archaeologists could reverse engineer the meanings: just like our archaeologists reverse engineer ancient words that we don't actually understand; of course, with less accuracy and more guesses. Is it archaeologists whom try reverse engineer ancient words? Or is it another job? Then, we have schools. Teachings was limited to parents to children; or maybe parents to neighboring children, whoever lives nearby and are friend to their child. Generally, mass teachings were rare before it turn into schools. Or you could say, any kind of mass teachings are considered schools, even if they didn't officially defined so. Of course, they won't have a pencil and paper like we have today: and consider that carving on rocks or carving on bamboo books are expensive, or just too slow; most teachings transfer knowledge orally. Words are more limited for large events recording. People could learn to read words; but practicing like we have today; maybe they should find some rocks and carving knives to practice, I don't know. And it turns into multiple levels of education. Normal child that don't need help in the fields could attend elementary education. Girl could also attend girls' school; but mostly to learn homemaking and feminine virtues. Boys learn the other stuffs that we learn today (except not that advance yet). And different country have different laws and culture on learning. Especially when philosophy trives, like during the Ancient Greece era between Plato, Aristotle, Stoicism, etc; or the Hundreds Schools of Thoughts in Ancient China: many opposing philosophies are being taught at the same time. People fight for their philosophy, and want to prove they're right. Other philosophies, though, can co-exist. While majority doesn't have large amount of students, a few manages to grow into the majority schools. It's just like today: the popular universities attract students from all over the world; while the less popular ones we might not even heard of them. As we mention; it depends on the country's law for schools. Many philosophies co-existing is known to disturb centralization and single-ruling; so if the king doesn't like, they could order the burning of books and libraries, massacre of scholars, while enhancing their supported philosophies to a greater extent, including holding political positions. Words that come from the previous ruling country are banned: and they shall use the new-ruling country's words to signify they aren't rebel. Historians have a difficult time recording truths that sounds not supportive of their countries, and are ordered to change histories or be tortured. It's a wonder how much torture the historians could receive to be strict of not changing histories; and whether the king ordered histories to be forgotten can historians rebel successful against its change. With larger population gathering comes different classes (one call it rankings rather than classes, just my taste). Higher-rankings (i.e. ruling classes) get to learn different things compared to normal-rankings (i.e. normal people whom are just slightly better than slaves). Normal rankings focus on learning agriculture, or maybe hunting, knowledges for survival. Higher rankings have the privilege to learn enjoyable contents, like music and poetry. Slaves? Well, most country banned slaves from learning, as gaining knowledge means slaves become aware they aren't legal, and they will start rebel. **Awareness make a slaves no more slaves**. Other countries, after gaining approval from their masters, allow slaves to enter education, and they can even learn to higher education if their masters help them pay or allow them to attend higher education. Sometimes, awareness is the only weapon we need. In a good sense, if we're aware that racism and slavery is not right, we go against it. If we are aware that our behavior lead to climate change that make Earth bad, we go against it. At the same time, if we are aware that we can use biological weapons in war, we'll use it. If we aren't aware of biological weapons' existence, we won't use it in war. That's awareness as a weapon. Mass teachings is not enough. Exchange teachings becomes popular in the previous two centuries: when we could not only study in our country's school, but visit schools in other countries and study from there. Usually, these are study of culture and tradition: to promote peace. We leave our culture and tradition for them to study; and we study their culture and tradition; and upon return, we bring back what we study and teach others at home. As of recent centuries, lots of attempts to promote global education exchanges made easy, including student visas plus scholarships. And international teachings allow people to solve problems on the world's scale: climate change isn't solvable by a single country, but requires global effort. Though, even till now, not every knowledge is study-able. Military schools are restricted to nationals, plus some allied countries with limited spots. As far as one knows a few years ago, and one is lazy to research whether it has changed or not, US Space companies only allowed US nationality to do an internship there. So, we see, not every knowledge is learnable. It depends on what knowledge countries wish to spread to the world, and what knowledge to keep for themselves, to determine how knowledgeable is the world. Similarly, higher-rankings don't wish normal-rankings to be too knowledgeable; otherwise propaganda cannot influence people on the mass scale to follow whatever propaganda they make. **We humans loves control: and anything outside our control, at the extreme thoughts, is to be eradicated.** Today, schools still lays an important role, and is officially supported by world organizations and governments. Despite its effectiveness haven't been better, we still manage to make friends in schools: something that child needs for better growth. If one is a total emotional and social noob (total sad life) and only want to study: one could easily learn them from the internet, more successfully than going to school. Why does Finland thrives in education than most of the rest of the world? We learn how to do math: they learn the **platform** to do math. We learn how to do differentiation by hand: they learn how to use a calculator to perform differentiation, and their students got interested in paper and pencil differentiation when they're satisfied with differentiation on the calculator. It (might have) got more females to love mathematics, unlike us in the whole world less females take mathematics because it's pencil and paper. Ok, that's just one story. Let's talk about the internet. Internet promotes self-learning at your own pace on the things you like. That's another thing Finland does compared to most of the rest of the world: they learn less subjects than us, and they learn deeper into each subject than us. While master of one is not good; jack of all trades is also not good. Master of some is the best: at least that's what we should aim for. We can choose to skip the boring lectures (most lectures are boring, believe me) and go straight to how we learn the best. Good! Plus it contains new contains updated more recently than textbooks being published and used in schools. So, you get to learn newer materials than out-of-date materials. Internet contains Big Data: we can never learn everything on the internet by ourselves. Previously, we move data from being stored in our brain to writings (on stones/bamboo books/papers/manuscripts/etc) to ensure we don't remember wrong, and to free our brains from having to remember these objects. Of course, during the early ages, memory methods like memory palaces (see Sherlock Holmes before?) could remember everything written if you get them right. But as information increases, and remembering exactly becomes important, it's not always possible to remember things in our brain; after all, our brain, however effective and large a memory it is, also have its limitations. We can only take in so much. Big Data is much much more than we could remember in our brains: to the highest precision (quality of data) and incorporates the highest ranges (quantity of data) possible for a given records. Data previously record every day can now record every minutes! These wasn't feasible on paper. Though, the growth of the internet also facilitates how fake and/or misleading information can transfer. People could post misleading images or tweets (equivalent) on social media to raise upheaval amongst the community, only to get their post the next day on the news to calm the upheaval and tell the community it's fake. People could focus on one-side of telling the story, letting us believe that's the real story without being aware there's "another side" of the story. People could utilize new technology like Machine Learning to generate large amount of similarly looking comments to direct their propaganda, influencing what they need (like voting process) in their direction. People could boast news that are half-true-half-fake, but they seems legit (since it's half-true): which, without comparing to other news sources, cannot be determined its authenticity. (Checkout Snopes). Most probably, people could build walled gardens to hide information from the public. All in all, internet facilitates the manipulation of audiences whom come back from work, hoping to relax by watching or listening to the news, and isn't aware it's a propaganda because they'd been too tired to think after work. https://www.snopes.com/ Though, some (but not all) of these problems could be solved by the blockchain. For example, aiming for transparency might not need "privacy policy" anymore. After all, if everything is transparent on the internet, why do you need privacy policy? And if you need them private, don't share them on the internet. Privacy policy is a stupid policy that forces people to accept it or they cannot use the software, whereas dumping it means people could continue to use the software without accepting the stupid privacy policy that anyone could change it at any time, with a single notice on the email, which probably nobody cares reading that email, and when problems came, they'll say you didn't read the email, so you can't complain them for say, sharing your private information with a third party or something, and even if you go to court you're in the disadvantaged side. With Blockchain's **anonymity**, by only linking the information to your wallet but not linking your wallet to you (nobody knows its your wallet if you choose not to share it; plus you can open a new wallet that has no relationship with your main wallet, thereby hiding identity), it's now a private information, no? Similarly, private operations inside a corporation are made public via transparency aim. People now knows how data is used on-chain; and they can choose what's saved on-chain. It's also important for software designers to carefully design their software such that it doesn't force the user to give in their "considered private" information before they're allowed to use the software; otherwise they could just open another Facebook or Twitter or whatsoever than building on the blockchain. Furthermore, information that could easily be deleted on Web2 isn't easily deleted on Web3 (though it's not impossible to do so). IPFS especially aims for immutability, hence write once read many operations, on their data stored. Unless everyone has a consensus on removing the content (particularly non-healthy contents like hate speech that promotes war or racism, or perhaps pornography contents, etc), it couldn't be removed from the IPFS. Though, consider how it disrupt the current technology. Many contents like YouTube, Spotify, Book-selling websites, are selling the contents to the audience. With the blockchain, it's impossible to hide the contents unless it uses old web2 technology: storing behind a database. So, it cames to re-think how we should re-access the information if they're not being locked behind walled gardens. What do people want to buy and they would like to pay if it's not for the contents? Generally, many people would take advantage from free contents without considering paying to the author even a cent, either legally (from a library, from online libraries, borrow from friends) or illegally (pirating websites). Even today, contents locked behind walled gardens are doomed to be pirated. Unless the content is super not popular there's no one taking the effort to pirate it, otherwise, most popular contents that's been some year old would have their piration online; even if their copyrights is still active, there certainly will be people pirating it, gets some download, before being taken down by copyrights policy. But of course, we must re-think and encourage people to pay for author: otherwise, it's not fair for the author to write something and don't get paid, finally becoming a beggar. We don't want to make sure that this starting age of web3 is the ending age for authors, that there will be no more authors writing long contents because they couldn't earn from it; that they will only write blogs and all we have is blogs but not books (even novels are blogs, which are written only on demand -- that someone pays, they'll continue write; otherwise, it'll stop if no one pays). So, let us be careful to proceed. Conclusion We have looked at how knowledge evolves (in simplified format of course, still pointing you towards the original article) and some of the drawbacks as they evolved. Finally, one wants to say, human demands control. Though most of us could resist from trying to control another person as if they're an object; it's true that, we possess powers more than our morals could take: we don't have the morality to suppress ourselves from trying to control things when we have enough power; at least for most people. If a conglomerate wants control, they need to make sure people are still dependent on them, such as via propaganda saying that blockchain is a scam, a Ponzi scheme: that could keep people from joining blockchain, hence still using their product. Though, crypto might be a scam, crypto might be a Ponzi scheme; but not blockchain. Blockchain is not crypto. Crypto is high risk, blockchain isn't. Conglomerate sends the opposite message. https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/YIB4whA1SANWAhBOcH53lPWg6Qo2VaAd44rNDQ01Vho https://read.cash/@wabinab/blockchain-is-not-crypto-investment-f84ac019 And finally, let us appreciate that the growth of knowledge and it's openness makes us a more knowledgeable person today: one that cannot be easily manipulated by others; one that can make decisions for ourselves compared to milleniums ago; and one that have knowledge to learn infinitely long when we feel like learning. :) **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** References The Evolution of Knowledge https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/YIB4whA1SANWAhBOcH53lPWg6Qo2VaAd44rNDQ01Vho And the other references on The Evolution of Knowledge: please refer there for its reference section.

I'll pause publishing a bit; haven't got any ideas yet. You could read this: https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/YIB4whA1SANWAhBOcH53lPWg6Qo2VaAd44rNDQ01Vho which one posted on Mirror few days ago, but haven't post a simplified version here yet. I may (or may not) post a simplified version in a few days. :)

Blockchain Safety (This is a simplified version of the Mirror Post Blockchain Safety. For the full article, read it on Mirror. ) https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/IpY43h3SlgdEO4r99SiJw4UgbhEesPhcoFyeYc7hgmM While we know blockchain solves problem on centralization and privacy, do we know that blockchain itself brings problem? One don't mean being hacked by attackers, 51% attacks, or how decentralized or transparent the blockchain is. One also don't mean the risks we have during crypto trading, investment, etc. One means, what programs built on top of blockchain and web3 brings negative implications to its end users? Supernormals Supernormal are programs that triggers our brain, letting us think that we need them for survival when we actually don't. For example: junk food containing high calories used to be survival-important; now not. More common, social media containing social recognition, which attracts more mate for better offspring. Social media could be the form of YouTube videos or Netflix videos. When something is addictive, tricking our brain thinking we need it for survival, hence spending lots and lots of time on it until it disturbs our normal life, we consider it supernormal. Normal activities includes reading a book, walking in the park, or having a conversation with a friend. These activities are enjoyable, but they aren't addictive. And now, we have programs that pays users for using social media: that's what web3 does. Say, noise.cash. It pays users for sharing their data. The starting point is good; but it isn't always good. Social media per se isn't healthy for human use. Now, we pay user for their data, meaning we attract more users to spend more time on finding useful data that attract likes by other users instead of preferring normal activities. That's one disturbance. Another disturbance is more people coming to browse social media. Luckily we didn't think of paying those people's time for browsing social media. Otherwise, we are encourage people to browse through social media instead of the normal activities that they could have enjoy somewhere else. Overall, we can't prevent people from overusing social media; but it's time to re-think how our program don't damage their social, mental, and physical health by spending all their time there if it was spent elsewhere (on normal programs) before the program was built. Games People loves games. We are already awarding people for playing games, like LOL competitions worldwide. Now, that only rewards the top players. Blockchain tries to reward every players with better distribution of wealth. Good starting point! Let's not forget that there are people sucked into playing games all the times when they could be doing something else. Let's not forget that, if everyone starts playing games, other sectors that may contribute to the society may start lack workers. When people could play game and earn enough to rear their living, why would they work for something else? Perhaps they're interested on working for something else at the beginning, but as games start ruining their lives and degrade their perseverance on other work, do they still want to work on that "something else" that they used to persevere for some time? And what says NFT marketplace is a buy and sell, peer to peer? Certainly, there would be top buyers, and top sellers. Top sellers, okay, nothing to say. Top buyers, if they're kids, you expect them to steal money from their parents to buy a game object; and they can't resist buying the better game object so they steal more money and buy more objects? We just create a new stealer for the society: beware of your neighborhoods! Kids that can't refrain themselves from spending money, and programs that don't restrict people from spending money, is dangerous. Though there are ways to overcome, like creating multiple accounts and transferring gameobjects from alternative accounts to main account, we do need at least basic ways for people to not easily get what they need. Conclusion Blockchain safety is a relatively new field, that one cannot yet find with basic (surface) google search. Perhaps it already exist, perhaps not. Yet, it's important to be aware of negative implications of your programs. Blockchain brings us a new future, but let's not forget its drawbacks! **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Respect Your Friends, Respect Your Partners (the article speaks from intimate friendship's point of view; though the reader can try apply it to other relationships) You know, many self-help books that are dedicated for couples can also be used for intimate relationships, after excluding the parts specific to a couple-relationship. After all, couples are just two really close friends that lives together and do things together, to help each other become their better self by helping each other, walking the road towards betterment. It's not just creating the next generation. So, one of the pillars that supports a couple-ship (and hence friendship) is "respect". Learning how to respect your partner, respect yourself, and sit down to discuss with your partners what you feel about each other, would improve the relationship. Particularly, some relationships are great; but they definitely will go sour. There will definitely be unheard comments about each other that you want to tell each other about. These are thoughts that you didn't tell each other because you're unsure whether it'll hurt the other person if you tell or not, so you keep it for yourself. But as thing grows, as more and more minor details stack on top of each other, a small problem become a big problem, you start thinking negatively about your partner, and you **refuse** to hear what (s)he has to say. That's when relationship are on the brink of damaged. Therefore, it's important to maintain a relationship. But how to maintain? The easiest **but most DANGEROUS** **way** to do so, is to directly tell your partner what you think of him/her. You might say, oh, this is what I think I don't like about you. You know what your partner will think? Oh, he/she will think, he/she also have something he/she don't like about you, and he/she deserves to say it first. But you might prefer to go all out of yourself first and refresh your feelings. Now, you don't have control of what your partners feel, so this is certainly a sure way to break a relationship. Let's look at a better way to do so. Better Way The first and foremost is to make sure you start repairing your relationship before it reaches the brink of destroy. Early repairs, added with the happiness shared between two people, can tolerate for each other's minor mistakes during the repair session by listening attentively to each other. While if it's on the brink of destroy, the default is to NOT listen to what your partners have to say, hence a repair is almost impossible. Well, as a last resort, if you have that kind of relationship, visit a psychotherapist to act as the bridge, a third party, to repair your relationships (including friendships!) Then, make sure when you repair relationships, each other aren't disturbed by anything. Insist on clearing away work or other disturbance that might disturb the session. Then, reserve a one-hour long session to speak about the stuffs. Not longer than an hour, because talking about these stuffs are quite serious; with a treat at the end after you resolved. Then, no shorter than an hour, because there aren't enough time to resolve anything if it is. An hour is just enough. Then, start with baring your neck. Rather than throwing things at your partner, start with asking them to throw things at you. What do they don't like about you? Because you're the one whom read this article, one expect you're more likely to stay calm and patience, allowing your partner whom haven't read this article (and the book in the reference below) to start the speaking about you. You're more controllable of yourself than controlling your partners, and you're more knowledgeable of how to take things softly rather than hardly, hence leading the session to a positive outcome. Then, after your partners have finish, asks some questions to clarify some things you don't understand. Plus, discuss with your partners what are the stuffs that you can accommodate, and what are the stuffs you can't accommodate. Especially request that you either couldn't sustain, or they goes below your bottom line. But make sure your bottom line isn't something unsustainable by your partners! Don't increase the bottom line because you feel irritated by him/her now; compared to a stranger or other friends. This is fairness, right? After you clarify and solves his/her feelings towards you, now you can invite yourself. You tell him/her that you also would like him/her to listen to you about things that you feel he/she would have to know, that relates to the relationship. Provided the person you're speaking to isn't a psychopathy person or self-indulging person that only cares about him/her and he/she is the middle of the solar system, most probably he/she can listen to what you have to tell. Be careful, don't speak with emotions too much. Try to speak it softly, conveying your emotions with words rather than directly with emotions towards each other. This allows the other person to stay calm and listen to what you have to say rather than feels uncomfortable and quit the session. Remember, although you can bare your neck on the others to speak emotionally; he/she can't bare their neck for you to speak emotionally. You, as the reader of this article (and the book below) accepts he/she as he/she is, hence is more tolerable to emotional listening; but that doesn't mean the same for him/her. After speaking, give some time for him/her to accept what you say, and hear what he/she has to say. Some reasonings can be accepted, some cannot, depending on how much love you are towards your friends (friendship can have love, just like parenting love, not just coupling love). It's a matter of compromise: what you guys can compromise about each other. Do mentions things clearly: if you're hiding something, it's the time to say it now. Speak from the origin, your bottom line, what you feels, etc to your partners and listen to what he/she has to say of his/her feelings etc, whether they can accept it or not. Even if they can't accept, you might feel better. It's time to decide whether or not you can tolerate something. Preferably, synergize for better solutions. There are a lot to speak here, and lots of tips and tricks that one can't write down everything. If you'd learn how to handle the sessions properly, you'd know how. If you didn't, there will be experimentations. And during experimentations, there are high chance you might lose some friends. So always bare your neck for that. As one also have difficulty putting one's experiences into words, some things have to be experienced yourself before things become successful. And it's also a good thing to understand whether your partner can take it or not. If they can't, either because they're too emotional or because you guys never take the effort and time to create a better relationship, it's difficult. One never meet that situation as one always try to make a relationship closer (and hence lose some friendship on my way to do that, for those whom can't become closer). If you guys only speaks on the surface, perhaps you don't really need to repair the relationship: they can be there or they can't be there, it doesn't disturb your life after all; they become replaceable. Only deep relationships requires time and effort to sustain and make better. Back to the main point, after everything, ensure you give each other a treat. Because it's been a sad and serious conversation, make each other life better by telling each other what you appreciate about each other, the tiny things that they may not have noticed but you feel good about them. Let them know you appreciate them a lot, that they are there in your life to make you happy, and you're there to make their life happier. Conclusion As a final note, how exactly to do, check out the book in the References. It has a specific step-by-step items to what steps you can take. Of course, there are something related to marital status, which you can skip if you're targeting intimate relationships. And, hope you turns out better, feels better about each other, after the conversations! Respect each other, and appreciate each other's presence. They're there for you, and you're there for them. Good luck! **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** References The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship by Mark Goulston

NEAR June Town Hall NEAR strives to create a world where people control their assets, data, and power of governance. We can achieve this by building the next generation platform for decentralized applications (dApps): something simple, scalable, sustainable, and secure. We want to onboard users that aren't in the ecosystem yet into the ecosystem: like using Aurora+, Sweatcoin, etc. NEAR Goal is onboard 1B users; and 18 months since mainnet launches, it's 1% complete. Though, from one's perspective, one doubt whether multiple accounts held by a single user is counted many times or once. After mainnet launched on April 2021, there had been lots of projects building on the NEAR Protocol. Quite a lot of these are open source, integrated into the NEAR ecosystem, like Ref Finance smart contract, Mintbase smart contract, DAOs smart contract, etc. Others have closed source programs (both frontend and smart contract) like CryptoHeroes game by PixelDApps. The NEAR Protocol strives for continuous progression and continuous innovation; never to stop when reaching a goal that it looks at the beginning. 19 Protocol updates had been made, and the team focused on stability and performance. They made major performance improvement to WASM, allowing the new Javascript VM (writing smart contract in javascript) possible. We are currently in Phase 0 of sharding, with 100 validators. In the next phase, coming up on September 2021, chunk-only block producers will validate a single shard; while the total number of validators will increase to 300 in the meantime. Each validation won't just depend on chunk-only producers, but block producers too! To prepare for Phase 1 sharding, the stake wars will begin. We had stake wars before phase 0, transferring validators from testnet to mainnet during mainnet launch. Now, the second stake war come to decide who will become validators next. As NEAR becomes more accepted, popular wallets like Metamask start adding NEAR to their supported chains. NEAR don't only decentralizes the platform, but also decentralizes the funding. Find the best developers and fund them. Regional hubs are built around the world. It's not centralizes around a certain country, but distributes across the world. Local presence, local events, local community, and local funding, to bring NEAR infrastructure into local use cases. There are three big announcement at the consensus mentioned: Armored Kingdom will be bringing new comics and games to the digital ecosystem. Sweat Economy had brought 7 million wallets (of 13+ million wallets as of video) to the ecosystem. Finally, Brave Browser and Aurora partners to bridge Aurora tokens in the Brave wallets, for privacy preserving in-browser wallets. Reference https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vd38YOVAJuE

We Have (Far) More Talents Than Attention and Time Have your parents watch other people play a piano and expect the same from you because you have long fingers that's suitable to play the piano? Or maybe, in school, you successfully ace the test of a single subject or perhaps an Olympiad without studying much because it comes so natural. These are talents. But we have so many talents, if you noticed, that we don't have time to pursue them all. Let's talk more. First, if you read Angela Duckworth's "Grit", you most probably know that talent doesn't mean everything. Someone makes their talent to success by passion and perseverance. Passion is the willingness to attach your attention and time to the subject you love, irregardless whether or not you have a talent or not in that subject. Perseverance is the willingness to stay on the subject for long enough, usually decades, even after you reached the top performance level. Though, what one wants to talk about today isn't about talent being a **bad** indicator of success; how talent puts you at a higher starting point than average but not at the finish line; but **how many talents we have and how much attention and time we could put into each talents**. Likewise, because we only live to certain age, plus each day only have certain number of hours, and we can only concentrate on certain things that we like; it's impossible to pursue every single talent. Say, you have a talent for badminton and piano. Each of these talent requires decades of practicing to master. With deliberate attention on imitation of top performance, though, you could reduce the number of practice time to reach the same stage as someone blindly practicing and failing their way to success. Overall, you still needs to spend some significant amount of time. If you spend it practicing badminton, you might or might not have time for piano, especially if, say, you also have work/school to pursue. There's a limit to how much you can do at a time. So even if we are gifted with lots of talents, it's important to choose what you're willing to persevere about. One would like to say about choosing what you're passionate about, but there are counter-arguments against choosing what you're passionate about. Instead, you gain passion after you did something for a long time because you like it. So, first do something that you might find boring; then the longer you do, the more passionate you get at that thing you thought were boring at first. If you can't get passionate when you did something for half a year, most probably that's not the dishes for you. And if you thought of pursuing every single talent you have; or at least quite a number of talents you have, you could never get it to the best you can. Even if your talent is your work, how much can you pursue a day? For one, that's three. If we practice our talent everyday, perhaps even weekends, we could only take up three talents at a time, at any time. One in the morning, one in the afternoon, and one at night. Though, if you'd like to have some rest, two would be the most. What if you have more than ten talents? Certainly, you can't pursue all of them. Talents are just something to boost your starting point faster than others; it's not there for you to pursue it if you are pursuing other talents. Even more, it's not necessarily to pursue talents. For example, one loves writing blog post. Nowadays, one wrote at least a blog post a week. But do you know that, before one starts writing blog, how bad one's language is? By "language" one means "language course" in school. It's "just pass" or "barely passing": that's slightly higher than the passing mark, "E" grade, maybe 50% or 40% (or any other number) depending on your school's passing mark. It's by no hope. But that's because school targets grammar and vocabulary and extensive English usage, etc, that's just not very useful in real life. Consider what you learn at school: the extensive English is only understandable in English-speaking countries; and the rest of the world uses easy English. If you could write easy English, your work might as well get attention from various readers. If you use what you learn in school, to write a complicated-English blog post, except for English-speaking readers (or anyone whom learnt their English to at least near-native), it's difficult to imagine if others could understand what kind of English you're writing if they have to Google Translate or search up the dictionary every few words! Conclusion So that's it. In conclusion, we are born with innate talents of a lot; but they're not necessarily pursued. Most talents will go "wasted", but that's okay, because we don't have to pursue them. They're like multiple choice questions, saying: these are what you have advantage over others, and you can choose one or two to pursue. The rest, just ignore. We only have limited time and attention: pursue the one you enjoy! As an extra conclusion, talent **will never guarantee success**. As Grit told, talent is a really bad indicator of success. Talent just guarantees a higher starting line, but if you can't persevere and stay in love with your talent, you can't get anywhere. **Remember to Like and Subscribe.** Read more at my Mirror post. If the main site keeps crashing, you can find the list of posts here. https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B https://wabinab.github.io/about

How to Make More Friends In one sentence: **Learn to Speak, then Learn to Respect**. If everyone knows how to make friends by default, there would be no introvert and extrovert differences; there would not be self-help books telling you "secrets to make friends". There would not be online blogs telling you "the n steps to make friends/rekindle friendship/etc". Making friends and retaining friends is a difficult, **effortful** job, so let's see how one suggests it works. What wouldn't work Being passively waiting for people to come to you wouldn't work. From one's experience, most people prefer to look at their phones than actively reaching out. Those that does the latter are rare. Therefore, if you're passive like everyone else, it's almost impossible to make friends without urges from both parties. Especially for a used-to-introvert like oneself, passively unwilling to change also wouldn't work; at least it would be either very slow, or not working at all. That is, staying too much inside our comfort zone means less opportunity for people to interact with us. If we want to make friends while we want to keep quiet, sorry, we're almost doomed to not make any friends. https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/u8hgiQR_H9JtyTnF0BbCmLaeIJZc11fvR0BifXCkOPE Certainly, some of the stuffs we can keep, especially bottom line. But we certainly have to get out of our comfort zone for some of the sectors. For example, one aren't willing to talk small talk, at least most of the time: on movies, musics, the weather, political stuffs, and especially stuffs that doesn't directly relatable to whom one's talking to. For the first two (movies and music), one don't have a fad on watching them, so one can only listen to others talking (which one's fine, one could always change topic after a while if they prefer to share movies as it relates to them). While the weather, political reasons, etc just aren't applicable. The former, the weather have nothing to do with the other person; and the latter, it doesn't directly relate to the other person (you can argue against, it's okay, but one won't agree.) Plus its not important in one's sense. And what do we need to change? Certainly, be more active. Actively reach out to your friends, your past friends, etc. This requires lots of patience, and one really means **a lot**. There will be friends whom don't reply to you, or they reply one, two, or three messages before they decide not to talk to you again, perhaps they don't have the attention to or for other reasons. These rejections occur more than 90% of the time. And we are to find those that would keep conversing with us, we're successful. Second, learn how to speak with your friends. For one, one loves to start off with deep questions; and after they're about exhausted, one would goes to speak whatever with a friend. By starting off with something difficult, we get to know more about each other. One recommends the "We Should Get Together" book by Kat Vellos; in the appendix there are a list of "Better Conversation Starters" for deep conversations. Pick the ones you're most interest about and start them. Don't use "How are you?" "How's life?" which are just boring. You could ask "What have you been doing recently that I don't know about?" "What's something you're concerned about for the past few weeks?" etc. And by all means, conversation starters aren't disposable. As humans change time by time, what we asked last time might be expired now. We could always ask back the same questions every six months on average and get a totally different answer. For example, "what's the last book you've read and how had it helped you? Is it interesting?" asked now and six months later are most probably different, unless they didn't read a single book in the next six months. And because the other partners most probably won't resonate with how we speak: that is, as an active member, and how almost all self-help books taught, we start conversations by asking questions. And by "non-resonating" one means the other way of how people communicate: they prefer people to speak something up, and expect the other partner to speak around the topic, resonating without them asking. You could try to use your five senses, or just ask directly to your conversation partner, whether they prefer you asking questions or speaking on a topic and they speak about them after you ask "how about you?" (explicitly if possible, implicit is too difficult to catch for people like us whom can't read what's going on and their emotions if the others aren't being explicit enough). Then prefer to converse on emotions than logical sense. Logical sense aren't designed for conversations: they're designed for debate. And debate aren't designed for keeping a close relationship: they keep a shallow easily-breakable weak-link relationship. Why do one prefer NOT to text but to physically meet, followed by video call followed by voice call? Learn how to listen to emotions. Most probably your sense would know how emotions works, unless you're extremely psychopathic, when you demolish more barriers to communication. Text message only shows what they text, which is just not useful at all. They are designed to determine a time to voice/video call or physically meet up. For one, one need to see the other person to determine whether one have spoken something wrong. And is that the end? Nope, of course not. Even those paragraphs above doesn't include everything one could speak about when making friends. It took one a few years to learn; but if you're willing to go for physiology or maybe someone helping you, you could decrease it to a few years. And one is still learning how to make friends with each other. For example, there are lots of books that speak about couples. By no means those books exist just for couples, because a relationship, platonic or not, the book will also help (perhaps except for the "healthy sex" section of the book). A couple is a really good friend, perhaps closer than most other friends. Hence, these books are really just friendship help books, not couple help books. Use what you learn from the "deemed couple-help books" on your friendship and it would improve. For example, there's a section called "Respect" in The 6 Secrets of a Lasting Relationship by Mark Goulston; and reading the chapter one feels that one might have not respect one's friends in the past, in some minute sectors. Exactly speaking, it reminds me of what sections one thought was respectful but actually wasn't. These are what one are shocked with: letting others take advantage of you lack of courage lack of ambition giving up too easily self-indulgent behavior childishness and immaturity incompetence And these are what one ever meet from others: breaking promises. dishonesty in business or personal affairs. avoiding challenges or difficult issues. having to be right at all costs. blaming others when things go wrong. complaining without trying to solve the problem. As usual, one can't see oneself properly. One can view some disrespect from oneself, but one can't see everything, so it depends on others to point it out to me. And for the complete list, check out page 108-109 of the book. One just read this chapter, which is the second pillar of the six pillars; so one still have lots to learn. Conclusion Making new friends and rekindling friendship have to be active. Passive almost never leads to a thing; at least the time when one got passively reached out is rare compared to how much (uncountable?) people one reached out to. One wouldn't say one is experienced; one is still new, on the road to learn more. And one doubt one would know exactly how to make new friends perfectly, nor how to rekindle a friendship properly, even in the decades to come. It's a continuous learning journey, and one wish you best of luck! Even after a long time, there would be things that doesn't meet your expectations. Easier said than done! **Remember to Like and Subscribe if you like my post!** References We Should Get Together by Kat Vellos The Six Secrets of a Lasting Relationship by Mark Goulston. One's previous experiences.

Check out my new post https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/u8hgiQR_H9JtyTnF0BbCmLaeIJZc11fvR0BifXCkOPE on mirror, about "we are taking too much things for granted"!

51% Attacks on DAO We have heard about the 51% attacks on validator nodes. It's when more than or equal to 50% of the validator nodes are controlled by hackers, whom could then control transactions, including reversing a transaction. But 51% attacks doesn't occur just for nodes! It could also happens on DAOs. Consider this situation: a member is a BCH lover (NEAR lover); and he/she brings in members of their family to join the community. So we have active members as families here. Each family members, due to their activity, are allowed to join in a DAO and gain voting power. Now, imagine the DAO has 13 council/community members with voting power; and out of the 13, 7 of them comes from the same family. If the family members sit down and make a decision without involving the other members, they could dominate DAO votes. It doesn't matter if all the others disagree. What matters is they discussed it within the family (especially if exclusive of community or against community expectations), and they decide something. This is the 51% attacks on DAO. The DAO is now a family-owned DAO; not a community-owned DAO. It's not just limited to family members. Example, if students from the same class, lead by the teacher, join a same DAO. Assume that the DAO is owned by global community; but because more than 51% of voting members are from that classroom, if they make a decision within the classroom without involving the other voting members, they could perform a 51% attacks on the voting decisions. The DAO is now a classroom-owned DAO; not a community-owned DAO. Solution If groups decide to join DAO as a group, they should only have one voting power. Whether it's a yes or a no, they could open up a sub-DAO within the group to decide before the final vote is passed as the DAO vote. Though, this isn't totally mitigate the problem. Wallets are incognito; and we could never know whether the people behind the wallets know each other or not, can influence each other or not to bend decisions in their will. Conclusion Even though DAO are council-based, the council might never seen each other face to face, and doesn't know about each other except they're an active member. This is unlike political council members or school council members where you see each other in real life and know more about them personally; hence decide whether they could or could not perform a 51% attacks. With so little knowledge of each other, it's important to be careful who you add to the council members, and whom have voting power. **Remember to Like and Subscribe.** **Check my Mirror** **for more posts!** https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B

What Makes a Story Boring? (This is a shorter + simplified version from written on mirror.xyz.) https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/tY8YRl4plQlG4EJS4sCjcBGZqhpuBA88Xbt1lpvAlOg Have you ever read a story that lose your interest quickly? Did you know why it distract your attention? One isn't sure about the "why" for you; here we speak of the "why" for one. **Too much details**. An author writes too deep into the details. A story is interesting because it's sufficiently general, perhaps with one or two details; and leave the details to the imagination of the readers. If the author detailed too much of the story, he/she enforce his/her imagination to the readers, leaving little imagination on the reader's part. The reader slowly lost interest when he/she can't think as he/she reads. **Too much explanation**. An author that makes the main sentence too vague that he/she needs to materialize it with "because", abuse "because". An author that introduces unnecessary attention to what the reader doesn't care about uses "because". A conversation is healthy, fun, and engaging when it leaves out the details, speaking on the general side. If the reader ever needs the details, he/she can ask for more information. Though, it's more difficult on writing, for the author to decide what to put and what not to put. Putting too little leaves some audiences blur, others okay. Putting too much lost most audiences interest, some audience nit-picking errors from details and file a complain report. It's better to leave out most details by attracting the audience; as audiences whom are attracted to the details are minority. **Too many long chapters.** The whole story attracts its audiences with variable length chapters: some long, some short. On average, it's just "about right". Though, some authors goes to great length for the first story, it's fine. But it's not fine *when they keep writing long chapters, each and every chapter*. Chapter are progress; and sufficiently short chapters signifies progress to audience; medium length are "just right", not too short that they doesn't feel the adrenaline rush and not too long that their adrenaline rush is over. When one play games, one loves to stop at a single "sub-chapter" or chapter, so we always begin a new beginning the next time we play. A story too long forces its audience's attention for too long, and it's annoying when the audience have other things to do and cannot stop because the story haven't yet finished. Long chapters should be an **exception**, not the norm. **Too many stories concurrently**. A story attracts its audience to a single detail, and speak around that central goal. The beginning of the story acts as a compass, directing the audience in each step, progressing towards the end of the story that's defined at the beginning. Even for fiction stories it progress towards one direction, perhaps not a small direction that's defined at the beginning of a chapter, but a larger direction defined at the beginning of the story. If you defined too many side quests, it diverges reader's attention to unnecessary part of the story. In video games, it's fine; the audiences interact with the game and can choose whether or not to complete the side quest, how many side quest to complete, and what side quests to skip. For story that tries to emulate game, audience don't have a choice but follow through what the author writes; and if the author detailed too much side quests, it lost its audience's attention. Slow progress loses its audiences. Multiple stories = too much to say = story not finishing when they should have finished tens of chapters ago = dwelling too long on that sub-storyline. **Too attracted to the past**. A story that keeps visiting what happened in the past, especially when it's already mentioned in the past chapters, are boring. Even if it's not mentioned before, it loses its point, capturing its audience into something of the past ***too often***. Once or twice in the whole story is fine; but more than that it's not. And **rare** short visit (of 40 words max) is fine; no more than that. Dwelling too much on the past loses its attention on the main storyline. Additional Details (not available on the longer story on Mirror) **Writing like text messages**. Have you encountered people whom type messages, sending every few words before they finish a single sentence or even a single paragraph? One found that ***extremely annoying!*** It's even more annoying if author writes a story like writing text messages. A story keeps my attention if they manages to *at least* finish a single sentence **before** pressing ENTER, with proper punctuations! If its a story that writes like this, I'm sorry, however interesting is your story, it's non-legible, non-readable. There are no proper beginning, no proper ending, hence annoying. Conclusion These are details that keeps one annoying, opens the door to quit reading these kind of stories. What are the details that you are annoyed about? Tell me more on the comments below! **Remember to check out one's** **Mirror.xyz writings**. These writings are mostly unique from read.cash, unless it's worth publishing on more platforms. https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Where does NFT find its place? On the previous (May 2022) NEAR Town Hall, people talk about NFT. Let's look at where sectors NFT are applied, and one'll add some personal opinions where relevant. The first use cases of NFT, after it's discovered, is as profile pictures. Since NFT are "non-fungible" by nature, profile pictures create your unique identity on the web domains. Despite the artwork being relatively ugly, it's more of a proof-of-work that NFT are indeed "NF". As people gets amazed with NFT's use cases, they start thinking how to apply it in their sector. For example, Proof of Attendance Protocol (POAP) that are like tickets that prove you visited, say, the zoo with your families before. There also act as receipts to, say, you donated to humanitarian causes. Gradually, "profile pictures" become more general: any kinds of content. An NFT could hold an art, a piece of music, or any other entities created by content creators. Just like collecting Mona Lisa, you could now collect NFT Mona Lisa. And music, Tamago aims for transparency, unlike Spotify; so anyone could listen to their music and people could collect (i.e. buy) the music hence supporting its creator. Perhaps games are one most popular use case of NFTs. People just loves playing games, whatever genre. As game marketplace changes from game creators to players to include p2p marketplace, trading NFTs replaces traditional trades. And some games (or other sectors) even found NFT staking utility: where just like staking NEAR, you could earn tokens or game points when staking NFTs. These are really just a few use cases. Air tickets, hotel reservation tickets, concert tickets are some utility NFTs that people could buy instead of a piece of paper and some kind of (reservation) numbers. A used tickets also acts as POAP when you think back in the future. Other NFT acts as a key to a gate. Some information locked behind database requires access only if you have the key: the NFT that could unlock that content. These are popular called unlockable contents. And NFT content doesn't have to be static. They could be updated over time, even in real time. People tried encapsulate an image oracle/API that shows price changes to NFTs; or perhaps they may show other dynamic contents in NFTs. As NFT find its way to many sectors, people will find a way to integrate NFTs into their use cases. For example, one is working on a NEAR Bookseller where people could sell books online (more information check this link). Additionally, there are blog post that prove its authenticity too storing as NFTs (like mirror.xyz's content; or maybe blogchain). https://mirror.xyz/0xa32e05D545FEc9cADb46BEB0839E3Ac0A9E39d9B/grXD3uOAppZJYPcysEumtSlZVI366O9L2qEaVZMGgQw We are just in the beginning where people are excited with what NFT could do, but afraid of (FUD with) the various disadvantages that blockchain brings (including scam everywhere, difficulty porting fiat to crypto in many parts of the world, too large currency fluctuation compared to fiat fluctuations, etc). As people conquer their fears, NFT will be more common in more sectors.

Nothing is Fully Secure You think encrypted objects can be fully secure? Not really. Normal encryption used to be secure; but when computing power increases, it grows not. Pseudo-random number generator (PRNG) generating those numbers are based on either a "seed" (some value you gave it), or based on non-deterministic value (which is actually based on the computer giving it a "seed" depending on various factors (perhaps time, date, or any other CPU states, whatever it can use to generate a seed). Then, we have cryptographically-secure PRNG (CSPRNG), which mentioned to be secure cryptographically. These uses non-symmetrical encryption and decryption keys; unlike a symmetrical one (which have same key used for encryption and decryption). A symmetrical is easy to break; for a hacker that gains access to the key when it transfers from one location to the other, the hacker can break the actual data. With a different key for encryption and decryption, and longer keys (128-bit, 256-bit, 512-bit) allows much difficult breaking. Yet, to say they're unbreakable is futile. For we assume that hackers don't have sufficient computing power to derive the private (decryption) key based on known public (encryption) key and the encrypted data, that doesn't mean hackers can't break it in the future. SDNL (Store-Now, Decrypt-Later) is the hacker's solution: we just store the encrypted data and public key now, and wait for a few years when computing power is strong enough (actually, when quantum computer's power is strong enough, which we now only have baby quantum computers not strong enough to break existing encryption yet) to break them, then they break. CSPRNG RSA encryption isn't that secure after all. Then, quantum encryption. We know that quantum computer are random by nature, based on currently existing Physics (at least, when one got out of college, that's what one learnt, 2 years ago). Random number aren't "pseudo-random" anymore. Hackers can't use a "seed" state to re-generate the random number, for quantum computers don't need that. But we never know: in the future, there may be other methods to break encryption. It may not be existing methods but new methods, we never know. Furthermore, quantum computing's "random nature" cannot be disprove now; that doesn't mean it cannot be disprove in the future. Science is a research to disprove existing theories and facts; and we cannot say 100% certain that what we now know won't be replace with something shockingly different in the future. Who knows? Of course, what one speaks about is encryption and "decrypt-able" decryption. There are other methods of encryption where you don't need the actual value, just a comparison of hash (like md5 or sha256): which one heard to be encrypt-able and not decrypt-able? One isn't sure, one didn't study that deep. Irregardless, consider that a few data are use to generate the hash, including a random number (they called nonce) and password. If only the password is not known (and the nonce is known, especially if nonce is generated via a PRNG), hackers might brute force the password and find that out with sufficient computing power (or maybe they have a more clever technique than brute force). Irregardless, it's also not completely secure. Conclusion We can have something that's sufficiently secure, but nothing is completely secure. Especially with one case, one wants to send something over through the blockchain, and there are libraries that don't cooperate with wasm and NEAR protocol's on-chain machines (especially with, say, "openssl" libraries in Rust won't work on normal wasm compilation). WE can't use a hash/digest because we're not comparing values: the contract don't know the actual value yet, hence it can't generate a digest to compare against. Contract is not a quantum computer, so quantum RNG (qRNG) isn't possible. Sending a qRNG over blockchain means exposing the value in a transaction receipt, so it's also not possible. Generating it from frontend requires backend also have the key, which needs to send over the blockchain, exposing it in transaction receipt, so not possible. We need to generate it from the frontend, for only a "view method" (that doesn't change the contract's state) retrieving the key won't be expose in a transaction receipt and non-discoverable. That means writing a (non-cryptographically secure) PRNG to deal with. Ok, enough of the babble, nothing is totally safe if you need encryption. Perhaps the safest is not to send them out; just storing it in one's computer is the safest. That also, if you are targeted by hackers and they hack your computer, it's also not safe. So perhaps writing it down might be the safest. But also, if a thief come to your house and stole that paper containing your secret... it's also not safe. So maybe the safest is storing it inside your brain. That also, if someone drugged you (with alcohol or other substances) you might not know you said your secret stuffs and get known by others. Nothing is fully secure. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!**

Societal Norm Can Be Wrong! Here's an Alternative. (These are more opinionated, and **there are no right or wrong**. Bear this in mind while you read through.) Have you ever stand outside the society, observing or even witnessing people within the society interacting? Have you ever observe yourself while you're interacting within the society (in groups with other people) from a 4th person perspective, noticing how you shape the society (with others), and how others (as a society) shape you? Have you ever stands on the boundary of society, or even outside it, to question societal norms; and the more you think, the more you conclude (some part of) the society is "wrong"? "Wrong" can be "not at its peak", "not the best solution"; and it could also be "wrong target", "norm being preserved should not be what we, as a human, actually aim for", "focusing on the wrong thing", "focus on things that aren't the most important to each individual in the society" When someone first started something, and people think this is great for something, the first generation creates the societal norm. Then, future generations follow. It's the unwritten (and maybe written) rules on how things work, assumed best for the society. Though, it's not always the best, though. If it is, there wouldn't be so many self-help books out there. Consider work. Perhaps the CEO at the top works from early morning (8am) to night (10pm); people below the CEO follows. The CEO works so long, don't you feel shy to work less? Gradually, that becomes the societal norm. Then, it create workaholics (and some anti-workaholic groups). Then, it damage individual health. Then, the norm is to visit hospital and get some medicine, not exercise. Yes, there are quite a lot of people whom exercises; but we can't really say they're majority. It seems a lot; but that's because the others may be in their office or home, so we can't see the rest of them. We can only make conclusion if there are proper research and tally, and prove to me that, majority of individuals do do enough exercises. So, when you start questioning societal norms, you started to notice all sorts of problems. Conventionally, we accept them by choosing to be blind to the problems. We enjoy ourselves anyways, so who cares about any problem? If we start noticing problems, we feel an urge to solve them, and notice we couldn't solve the problem but can only change ourselves, we drift farther and farther away from the society. We either find another group that also wants to change the current societal norm, or we get isolated from the original group with our weirdness and non-fitting to the original group. Perhaps most that want societal acceptance more than to solve the problem will fall back, join back the group, forget about what happened, and be blind to the problem. Others drift further apart, eventually break away from the group as they no longer share what kept them together in the first place. Societal norm exists originally to provide individual meaning to their life. Individuals originally only want to fit into the society, without any meaning to their life. As we grow, schools taught us to find meaning for our life; but those meanings we found mostly are others' meaning, **not our meaning**. The meaning are created by others, not us. Most of these are common (and broad, non-specific): I want to be rich. I want to be happy. I want to be popular. I want to be at the top (of the ladder). I want to have a (happy) family. etc. Sure, that's certainly exist already right? You want that because others want that, right? Because others have that and you don't have so you want that right? Ultimately your desire are shaped by the society, by what others have and what you don't have, and you set an anchor to climb to where they are right now, and have what others don't have. **You aim for someone else's position, so your meaning is derived from others, you didn't make your own meaning.** And if there other meaning? I don't know. It's too difficult to find people whom make their own meaning, whom prefers to not get influenced by the society. Because a stereotype meaning of "successful" only applies to those that stays within the society, those that follows the convention; when you get out, you no longer have someone to look forward to. You search for your own meaning in the dark, no one to guide you. You create your own goals to achieve that differs (most probably) from those around you. And you find the majority of your friends (if not all) not searching for their own meaning and you'd be: "Why are everyone following the path laid ahead by the previous (few) generation(s)? Why, after hearing myself out, they aren't willing to search for their own meaning too?" Perhaps the rare might follow your path; but most of them would ignore anyways. "No one to guide you" is not actually always true. If you found someone with higher "meaning-making development" than yourself, they might be able to guide you through. Though, it's another story on how to not follow their meaning and really find your own meaning; so guidance is guidance, not solution. A guide can only bring you along the road for that long; and the rest, it's all on you. Several years into meaning making, one understand that one can't influences anyone to step up on the road. One walks on it alone (currently), only knowing from online research (see resources) that there are others whom are on similar path as one does. One gave up influence people to join myself, and watching them walking their path is as enjoyable. Though, one feel quite jealous actually, to not be able to walk their path anymore after the realization. It certainly isn't easy, and growing higher than societal norm aren't always advantageous; but one did not regret one's decision to grow. The advantage that it brought me, the early realizations, one conclude it superseded staying blind and follow the norm. For one: Striving for making close (intimate) friendship (relationship) is more important than work. If you have the opportunity to go out with a close friend (that's "always busy") (or someone that you want to deepen your friendship with), go for it rather than complete your work (school work, home work, or work's work). You can always do work anytime, but you can't speak with a friend always. And believe me, if you're the one who's "always busy", you never get idle, and you never get the opportunity to speak with your friend (without being occupied by your work) with **full attention**. Your goal influences your decision. When you decide what to give up and what to persevere. When you decide what to pursue and what to ignore. When you decide what (decisions) to persist and what to let go. Whatever your goal is, your decision circles around that goal. And if you start feeling, "this should not be it", perhaps question your goal: are they really what you want? Or just something you aim because others want/have? **You're in grave danger if you don't even have the time to find your meaning in life.** Example: all my time are put into activity XXX and YYY and ZZZ, and I can't take more, so now I have no time to stop thinking. Be careful! Ok, no conclusion. Things are clear. Though, the society needs conventional people; and it also needs post-conventional people. That's what makes up a society right? Majority + Minority. Majority for stability; minority to question and push changes. Ok let's stop here. **Remember to Like and Subscribe!** Resources https://www.sloww.co/ego-development-theory-cook-greuter/ and anything related to this theory that you can search online.