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Book: 20251226 to 20260428, "The Fountainhead" by Ayn Rand

20251231 - PART ONE - Peter Keating, p15 To hide the joints in wood - when columns were made of wood, only these aren't, they're marble. p23 It's hard to believe that the archtects in 1940s didn't change their design with new materials coming out, such as steel and concrete, considering that Empire State Building was build in 1931. Howard Roark follow the first principles. That's good. He doesn't care other people's opinion, if those opinions are obviously wrong. That's also good. But no need to let other people realize that directly. We can stay humber, and ignore the objections from others. For example, he should take one year break from school, instead of being kicked out of school. Howard Roark lacks soft skill, such as communication skill and empathy. Keating has both soft skill and hard skill, although his hard skill is far behind Roark. Howard Roark is the modern version of Nikola Tesla, and Keating is more like Thomas Edison. Most of CEO only hav...

Book: 20251117 to 20260105, "Positioning" by AL Ries and Jack Trout

20251117 - Introduction Positioning is the first body of thought that comes to grips with the difficult problem of getting heard in our overcommunicated society. p3 Feels like "identity" to individual person. 20251118 - Chapter 1. What Positioning Is All About. In general, the mind accepts only that which matches prior knowledge or experience. p6 It's always like this. Only small percentage of people are sensitive, and are willing to change their perception of the world. People can understand and accept radio-controlled autonomous cars, but not AI controlled cars. By turning the process around, by focusing on the prospect rather than the product , you simplify the selection process. p9 20251118 - Chapter 2. The Assault on the Mind. How to handle the overcommunicated society? Let AI to handle it? Only if AI never tell lies. 20251119 - Chapter 3. Getting Into the Mind. From the product era to the image era, then to the positioning era. p24 Can I go back to the product era? ...

Book: 20251115 to 20260102, "Breath" by James Nestor

20251115 - Introduction xiii Is one hour meditation that different from 20 minutes meditation? Yes, based on AI(GPT-5.1). Part 1 The Experiment 20251116 - Chapter 1 The Worst Breathers in the Animal Kingdom 3 20251116 - Chapter 2 Mouthbreathing 19 This process(anaerobic respiration) explains why the first few minutes of an intense workout are often so miserable. p24 Does this mean that we may use deep breath to partly replace warming up exercise? Part 2 The lost Art and Science of Breathing 20251116 - Chapter 3 Nose 37 The right nostril: logical decisions, language, and computing. Less hallucinations. The left nostril: imagination, creativity, negative emotions. 3M Nexcare Durapore "durable cloth" tape. p51 Worth trying! 20251201 - Chapter 4 Exhale 53 The key to breathing, lung expansion, and the long life that came with it was on the other end of respiration. It was in the transformative power of a full exhalation. p59 The stories from Carl Stough are suspecious, in...

Book: 20251126 to 20251210, "AI Rising" by Randy W. Kirk & Brian Wang

This book is boring. Nothing new in it. 20251126 - FOREWORD 20251126 - Introduction 20251126 - Chapter 1 - What is Super Intelligence and Why Does it Matter To some extent, I think that the point of singularity was passed 300 years ago, with James Watt's steam engine. 20251126 - Chapter 2 - Real-World Applications and Niches The author is quite naive about the effect of AI. AI and human both are part of the system. If AI is so smart and powerful, that would make human weak. Good times create weak men. Extremely good times create extremely weak men. 20251126 - Chapter 3 - The Economic Boom of Super Intelligence 20251126 - Chapter 4 - Life in an SI World. 20251126 - Chapter 5 - The Dark Side of AI: Navigating the Shadows in an Abundant Future 20251126 - Chapter 6 - Individual Survival Strategies 20251126 - Chapter 7 - Become Unrecognizable or Disappear The ASI Disruption It's large companies vs small companies. The importance of asset will keep rising. That's why huge compani...

Book: 20250930 to 20251209, "The Big Picture" by Sean M. Carroll

Part One: Cosmos 20250930 - 1. The Fundamental Nature of Reality 20251001 - 2. Poetic Naturalism 20251002 - 3. The World Moves By Itself 20251003 - 4. What Determines What Will Happen Next? 20251003 - 5. Reasons Why Metaphysical principles are tempting shortcuts but not reliable guides. p41 The book tries to analyze philosophy using psychology. That's amazing. 20251004 - 6. Our Universe Astronomers estimate that the last dim star will wink out around 1 quadrillion(10^15) years from now. p52 After about 1 googol(10^100) years, all of the black holes in our observable universe will have evaporated into a think mist of particles, which will grow more nad more dilute as space continues to expand. p53 If we build a Dyson Sphere to absorb the radiation around a black hole, that could provide enough energy to support our civilization. 20251004 - 7. Time’s Arrow In equilibrium, time has no arrow. p58 Is this the reason that we age slower if eat less? If we can easily make a pile of ash bac...

Book: 20250724 to 20251115, "Catch-22" by Heller, Joseph

20250725 - Chapter 1: The Texan Catch-22 required that each censored letter bear the censoring officer's name. p9 Is this what this book about? No one monitor the ones who are in charge? 20250725 - Chapter 2: Clevinger 20250725 - Chapter 3: Havermeyer 20250725 - Chapter 4: Doc Daneeka "Maybe a long life does have to be filled with many unpleasant conditions if it's to seem long. But in that event, who wants one?" "I do." Dunbar told him. p44 It's boredom vs pain. Boredom is worse than pain, as pain may some potential benefit to us later on, while boredom is always futile. 20250725 - Chapter 5: Chief White Halfoat Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn't really crazy. p52 True. Just like that any cell in our body is on duty if it works. Or else, it will be disolved. There is no way to run away. The only thing we can do is to run away in advance. 20250806 - Chapter 6: Hungry Joe 20250806 - Chapter 7: McWatt 20250806 - Chapter 8: Lieut...

Book: 20250830 to 20251106, "Average is over" by Tyler Cowen

PART I: Welcome to the Hyper-Meritocracy 20250831 - 1: Work and Wages in iWorld Marriages, families, businesses, countries, cities, and regions all will see a greater split in material outcomes; namely, they will either rise to the top in terms of quality or make do with unimpressive results. p4 Well said. How about our health, including physical health and mental health? Technological progress slows down when there are too many people who have the right to say no, but software in general gets around a lot of the traditional veto points. p17 This is a real problem for self-driving cars, but is it a problem for humanoid robots in factories? It sounds a little silly, but making high earners feel better in just about every part of their lives will be a major source of job growth in the future. p23 A lot of wealthy people will like that. But that's dumb. Budda was wealthy, and didn't need anyone to make him feel better. 20250904 - 2: The Big Earners and the Big Losers It sounds a l...