u/FabulousCucumber3697

十多前我在想，为什么一些国家人口不少，也并不缺少聪明人，但在科学、技术、文学和商业领域，能够进入世界一流水平的人才比例却并不高。这个想法和我自己的经历有关：我小时候的母语是福州话（中国南方方言之一），后来学习普通话，直至小学四年级才能看懂报纸，听懂歌词，电视台新闻。这个过程让我很早就意识到一件事：并不是所有人都擅长学习第二种语言。

一个人的数学能力、空间想象力、机械能力、文学感受力，和他的第二语言学习能力，并不是同一回事。有些人本来可能很有科学、工程或者商业天赋，却因为语言这一关始终过不去，最后没有机会进入更高层次的知识世界。因此一个社会采用什么语言和文字体系，不只是文化问题，还可能直接影响它的人才数量。

我的理解是，每一种成熟语言背后，都连接着一个巨大的知识库。英语背后有现代科学、计算机、医学、金融和商业体系；日语在近代吸收了大量欧美科学技术，并建立了完整的工业、工程和教育体系；汉语背后也积累了庞大的历史、文学、技术和现代知识。

这有点像计算机，人的智力可以看作 CPU 或 GPU 的计算能力；语言像接口或者操作系统；而一种语言几百年来积累的教材、论文、技术标准、专业术语、文学作品和商业经验，就像软件库。软件再好如果缺少软件生态，实际能够发挥出来的能力仍然有限。所以我在思考越南的时候，会产生这样一个假设。

二战以后，越南建立现代民族国家。如果当时在保留越南语日常使用的同时，更直接、更深地接入英语、法语或者汉语这样已经拥有庞大知识体系的语言，越南人获取世界先进科学技术的成本，也许会低很多。我并不是说越南语本身不好，（80年代中国亦产生是否要拥抱英语反思，当时汉字难以输入电脑／计算机）

问题在于一个规模较小的语言体系，如果希望独立承担现代教育的全部功能，就必须自己完成大量工作：翻译外国教材、创造专业术语、编写本国教材、培养教师，再把新的知识传播给下一代。这相当于整个国家都要长期支付一笔巨大的“知识转码成本”。而如果一个学生本身就能够直接进入英语、汉语或其他成熟知识体系，他就少了一层等待翻译和重新整理的过程。

日本和韩国让我更加注意到这个问题，日本在近代已经建立了完整的现代工业、教育和科学体系，大量欧美知识被翻译进入日语。朝鲜半岛在日本统治时期虽然经历了殖民压迫和不平等，但也客观上接触到了日本已经建立起来的现代学校、工业、工程、医学和技术体系。战后的韩国又进一步接入美国和英语世界。

因此韩国后来并不是从零开始建立现代知识体系，而是在已有基础上继续接入新的知识网络。这让我觉得，真正决定一个国家人才产出的，不只是人口多少，也不只是所谓民族智力，而是一个有潜力的孩子，要经过多少道门槛，才能接触到世界最先进的知识。

最理想的情况应该是：一个孩子拥有天赋之后，可以从基础教育一路进入现代科学、工程、医学、文学和商业知识，而不是先花大量时间克服语言和文字障碍。

如果一道语言门槛过高，就会提前淘汰一部分人。这些人并不一定不聪明，只是他们的天赋不在语言学习方面。

因此我怀疑，越南现代人才数量相对有限，除了战争、经济、工业基础和政治环境等原因之外，语言知识体系的规模和与世界知识网络连接的效率，也可能是一个长期被低估的因素。

换句话说：语言不仅承载文化，也承载知识。一个国家选择什么语言体系，实际上也决定了自己的下一代，可以多快、多容易地调用人类已经积累下来的知识。而对于一个国家来说，真正宝贵的不是让所有人都成为语言天才，而是尽量不要让语言成为科学家、工程师、作家和企业家的第一道淘汰线。

Watching the stock price of a company you truly believe in keep falling is always frustrating. It tests your patience, your conviction, and sometimes even makes you question your own judgment. But if the business is still moving in the right direction and the original thesis remains intact, sometimes the hardest part is simply surviving the darkness long enough to see the sunrise. The last company where I successfully waited for that sunrise was Palantir. I started holding PLTR around the IPO period and stayed with it through years of ups and downs. I eventually sold my final 100 shares at around $160 and moved that money into Applied Digital at roughly $16. Now APLD is another waiting game for me. No one knows exactly when the sunrise will come, and of course not every investment story ends the same way. But one lesson PLTR taught me is that when the direction is right, patience can sometimes matter just as much as picking the right company. （Fortunately, I’ve also been able to recover some capital by selling covered calls along the way, which has brought my effective APLD cost basis down to roughly $10 per share. ）

This set of five 26p stamps was issued by the Royal Mail in 1998 in memory of Diana, Princess of Wales (1961–1997). Each stamp features a different portrait of Diana, while the silhouette of Queen Elizabeth II appears in the upper corner.

Received this unexpected $51.41 check today from an FTC settlement with Grubhub.The amount itself is small, but it made me think about something much bigger.

For an individual delivery driver, there is almost no realistic way to fight a large platform over misleading earnings claims, unfair practices, or money that should have been paid. Most workers simply do not have the time, money, legal knowledge, or bargaining power to challenge a corporation on their own. That is why government oversight matters.Without agencies like the Federal Trade Commission and state regulators investigating these cases and forcing companies to answer for their practices, many ordinary workers would probably never recover anything at all. $51.41 will not change anyone’s life. But what it represents is much more important: rules still matter, enforcement matters, and ordinary workers need institutions powerful enough to stand between them and companies far larger than they are.Seeing this check brought back a lot of memories from my years doing delivery work. Sometimes a small piece of paper can make you think about a much bigger system.

I’ve had this U.S. WWII commemorative stamp sheet for many years. It was issued in 1995, marking the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. The market value today is not especially high, but I think its historical value is much more interesting. The full sheet preserves a map, major events, battle scenes, surrender, liberation, and the return of soldiers home. What makes it meaningful to me is that it records two different moments at once: what happened in 1945, and how Americans in 1995 chose to remember 1945. Maybe a few hundred years from now, objects like this will be viewed less as ordinary stamps and more as small historical documents from our era. Sometimes the story behind a stamp is worth much more than the stamp itself.

Sun Yat-sen — 孙中山 Chiang Kai-shek — 蒋介石 Mao Zedong — 毛泽东

In 1953, China issued a four-stamp set based on ancient Dunhuang murals, depicting a horse groom, musicians, combat scenes, and an ox cart from the Western Wei, Northern Zhou and Tang periods.

China, 1950 — First Anniversary of the Founding of the People’s Republic, Northeast China issue. These stamps were specially issued for use in Northeast China, where a different currency system was still in circulation during the early transition period after 1949.

These five connected stamps reproduce The Night Revels of Han Xizai 韩𤋮载, one of the most famous surviving images of elite life in 10th-century China. The surviving scroll is a Song-dynasty copy of a work traditionally attributed to the Southern Tang court painter Gu Hongzhong, and is now preserved in the Palace Museum in Beijing. According to tradition, the painter was sent by the emperor to observe Han Xizai’s private nighttime banquets and record what he saw from memory.

My rear wheel arch molding came off a few days ago. The replacement arrived yesterday, so I installed it myself today. Took about 20 minutes. The tricky part was figuring out where to start. I found it much easier to start from the side near the rear door, with the door open, then work my way around the wheel arch. I broke a few plastic clips along the way, but luckily I had a box of replacement clips. Pretty satisfying little DIY repair and saved me a trip to the body shop.

One page contains the last Hong Kong Queen Elizabeth II definitive stamps that I bought from Hongkong Post as a teenager. The other is a souvenir sheet commemorating the first Chief Executive of the Hong Kong SAR following the 1997 takeover.

I recently started organizing my childhood stamp album after more than 30 years. This is one of my favorite pieces—a Republic of China (Taiwan) souvenir sheet featuring Kublai Khan Hunting (“元世祖出獵圖”).I collected stamps as a child, mostly from Hong Kong, China, and overseas letters, along with sets I saved up to buy myself. Rediscovering this album has brought back many memories. I’m not looking to sell it—just wanted to share it with fellow collectors. Does anyone else here collect Chinese or Taiwanese art-themed stamps?

I want to add more context to my previous post and share the detailed weekly statements, including my earnings before and after the NYC weekly bonus started.

One important point: the “Batch hours” shown by Instacart are NYC trip time, not my total working time.After completing a delivery, I often have to drive back toward a supermarket or shopping area that I know well before I can realistically take another batch. That return drive is often around 20–30 minutes. Not every batch requires a full return trip, but a significant amount of this repositioning time is not included in the batch hours shown by the app.

Before the weekly bonus:

June 15–21

• 20 batches
• 14 hr 51 min NYC trip time
• $336.15 batch pay
• $156.76 tips
• $0 adjustment
• $492.91 total

June 22–28

• 30 batches
• 29 hr 19 min NYC trip time
• $589.24 batch pay
• $285.92 tips
• $61.44 NYC earnings adjustment
• $936.60 total

Then the NYC weekly bonus started.

June 29–July 5

• I only completed 1 batch that week
• 1 hr 45 min NYC trip time
• $36.42 batch pay
• $10 tip
• $44.36 NYC bonus
• $93.28 total

Once I understood how significant the weekly bonus could be, I started doing much more Instacart work.

July 20–26

• 41 batches
• 39 hr 27 min NYC trip time
• $818.87 batch pay
• $278.60 tips
• $54.83 NYC earnings adjustment
• $1,288.91 NYC bonus
• $2,441.21 total

July 27–August 2

• 41 batches
• 31 hr 58 min NYC trip time
• $707.06 batch pay
• $193.79 tips
• $0.76 NYC earnings adjustment
• $749.24 NYC bonus
• $1,650.85 total

I’m sharing the detailed numbers because I want to be transparent about both sides. Yes, my real working time is higher than the “Batch hours” shown in the app because unpaid repositioning time exists. I also pay for my own gas, maintenance, insurance and vehicle depreciation.

But those same costs existed before the weekly bonus.What changed is that the NYC bonus made many orders economically worth accepting.

Before, I would often reject low-tip or no-tip orders because after shopping, delivery and driving back toward a useful shopping area, the pay simply wasn’t worth the time and vehicle expense. Now I’m much more willing to accept those orders and complete them quickly. To me, that is an important part of what this policy actually changes.

It doesn’t eliminate every unpaid minute or every expense of gig work. But it makes more ordinary orders worth doing, gives experienced shoppers a reason to stay active on the platform, and provides a much more stable income than I had before.I’m posting the actual weekly statements so people can look at the numbers and make their own conclusions.

I’m genuinely grateful to New York City and New York State for taking steps to protect gig workers. As someone with hearing loss, finding work that offers both flexibility and a fair income is especially meaningful to me. Gig work allows me to support myself while working in a way that fits my circumstances.

Before these changes, it was difficult to earn a stable income even after staying online for long hours. Since the new NYC pay system and weekly bonus started, my earnings have improved significantly. I can now cover gas, vehicle maintenance, daily expenses, and still have money left to save and invest.

This is what a fair and dignified income means to me. Gig workers still work hard, use our own cars, pay our own expenses, and deal with a lot of uncertainty. These protections have made the work more sustainable and have given workers like me greater financial security and dignity.

Thank you to the city and state officials who supported these changes. They have made a real difference in my life.