September 3, 2025　　# Book: Nuclear War: A Scenario

Flipped through an interesting book named Nuclear War: A Scenario (by Annie Jacobsen). The hypothetical scenario laid out by the book highlighted many of the fragilities that today's nuclear balance, based on the so-called Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), has. The scenario started with North Korea launching a missile towards Washington, DC, an action no doubt very crazy but not completely unimaginable, considering that all nuclear countries, including those that are democratic in other aspects, are more or less dictatorial when it comes to the use of nuclear weapons, and therefore rely on the mental wellness of an individual ‒ sometimes a very old individual whose own future is very lacking. The US responded with dozens of its own nuclear weapons following the so-called "Launch on Warning" policy, which doesn't care about whether the enemy missile really carried a nuclear warhead (in the book, however, the author let North Korea launch a second missile, a short range one, that hit the US with a nuclear warhead, thus making the US response more rational than the policy allows). The US–North Korea nuclear exchange quickly escalated into an Armageddon due to three factors: 1. Some of the US missiles needed to fly over Russia; 2. The Russian missile detection system was not accurate enough to tell the difference between a fly over and an attack; 3. The presidential hotline between the US and Russia that was supposed to avoid such escalation was disrupted by the North Korea missile that hit Washington, DC. As a result, Russia, whose nuclear policy is no less reckless than "Launch on Warning", launched about 1,000 nuclear warheads towards US and NATO countries in Europe...... and the latter retaliated with whatever remained in their nuclear stockpile...... and that's pretty much the end of what used to be self-designated as the "Human Civilization".

September 10, 2025　　# Movie: Jaws

Watched the 50th anniversary re-release of the movie Jaws, and found it fairly enjoyable. I suppose it has been digitally enhanced to a certain degree to reduce the technological gap that should otherwise inevitably make it visually too far below today's standard. What I saw was a movie whose visual quality is not only good enough to watch, but in a sense "bad" enough so that some scenes were surprisingly (and perhaps inadvertently) coated with an artistic flavor, as if through an artistic or anime-style filter. I also enjoyed the scene in which Quint and Hooper drunkenly exchange and compete with body-scar stories.

September 18, 2025　　# Book: In Joy Still Felt

Isaac Asimov is a favorite author of mine. I enjoy not only his writings but the chatty, rational, and humorous way he wrote. Several weeks ago, I saw in Strand a hardcover copy of the 2nd volume of his autobiography: In Joy Still Felt. I of course already have all his autobiographies. But the In Joy Still Felt I have is a paperback, different from the 1st volume In Memory Yet Green, which is a hardcover. Though tempted, I resisted the urge to buy it merely to make the two volumes look uniform, especially because the 2nd volume I have is already a re-purchase that substituted the copy I used to have, which was in poorer condition, and it felt guilty to spend yet more money on that volume. That book was in Strand ever since then, and became iteratively more attractive each time I visited Strand and saw it again, until I could resist no more and decided to buy it "next time". But when that time came, Murphy's Law, or a variant of it, kicked in, and the book was gone! [Notes: I had a similar experience last year.]

September 26, 2025　　# Movie: A Big Bold Beautiful Journey

Watched the movie A Big Bold Beautiful Journey. It is a hard-to-categorize movie in the sense that there is no way to make sense of the background setting: far too non-scientific to be a sci-fi, far too non-magical to be a fantasy, and far too unrealistic to be a normal movie. The plot was made up of a series of anecdotes, less coherent and logical than one would expect for a good movie, which I suppose it is not (for it was merely the 6th day since its release, and I was already the only one sitting in the auditorium). But with all the bizarreness, it is still a movie that is genuinely romantic with an atmosphere of suspense, and a movie worth watching.

October 1, 2025　　# Movie: Lawrence of Arabia

Watched the 2025 re-release of the 1962 movie Lawrence of Arabia. It is based on T. E. Lawrence's autobiographical book Seven Pillars of Wisdom. I heard of the book many years ago and was impressed by the intriguing history through which it came into being (i.e. the 1st draft of 250,000 words was lost, the 2nd draft of 400,000 words was self-ruled as "hopelessly bad" and abandoned, and the 3rd draft of about 250,000 words was finally published in a very small number of copies). I liked the movie (it was a long one with a 15-minute break in the middle), and I felt that perhaps because it was prior to the era of AI-assisted movie-making, more human creativity and talents could be seen sparkling, and it was elegant and artistic.

October 3, 2025　　# Movie: One Battle After Another

Watched the movie One Battle After Another. Not necessarily a bad movie, but not my type. It's basically "one battle after another" between far-left extremists and far-right extremists (with a major exception being a mere paranoid drug addict), both of whom rarely hesitate to kill not only enemies but whoever happens to get into their way. Curse words are so abundant that it's not too exaggerated to say nobody, whether a young girl or an old man, can speak a single sentence without them. Once again, not necessarily a bad movie, but not my type. There is not a single character I liked, not even marginally.

October 9, 2025　　# Asimov on Mystics

「Oddly enough, it is much easier to believe mystics than it is to believe scientists. Many a person who seriously questions the existence of atoms and who furiously doubts that the speed of light cannot be surpassed accepts UFOs without a murmur and is ready to believe that ghosts exist, that extrasensory perception is a known fact, and so on.」

—— Isaac Asimov Presents Tales of the Occult   

October 14, 2025　　# Autumn

The footsteps of autumn...

October 15, 2025　　# Threads Is Very Dead

Although I'm still posting on Threads, the platform seems very dead to me, and perhaps to others with small accounts similar to mine. With 85 followers, the attached snapshot shows 2 views in 16 hours for a recent post, an activity-to-followers ratio I have never seen on any other platform, however notorious their zombie account issue might be.

I, of course, did have posts that received numerous views. But even for those, it was, without exception, due to AI promotion rather than spread by real users, as can be seen from the lack of reposts, on which user spread relies. A platform on which small accounts (which represent 99.9...% of all users) are at AI's mercy is like a world with a simulated reality, a world similar to what was depicted in the movie The Matrix.

October 20, 2025　　# Movie: Tron: Ares

Watched two movies last week: Tron: Ares and Truth & Treason, both of which deserve a dedicated post. Tron: Ares is a visually appealing Sci-Fi movie and is very typical. The complaint I had about it is also typical: it makes no sense for AI soldiers so advanced in other aspects to use blade-type weapons that can only kill on contact. However cool-looking a blade type weapon might be, there is a reason why not only soldiers and policemen, but also criminals and thugs, use guns whenever possible. The outcomes of most conflicts in the movie would be completely different if guns or laser guns were more widely used. The only problem, however, from the point of view of movie-making, is that guns controlled by AI would perhaps be too lethal for a story to have a chance to develop.

October 22, 2025　　# Movie: Truth & Treason

Truth & Treason is the second movie I watched last week and it is based on a real story. I usually don't particularly like movies based on real stories, as I consider them not as intricate as works of free creation, and not as truthful as documentaries. After watching this movie, however, I felt that there is one advantage of such movies: the characters are more realistic ‒ because they are indeed largely real. Another thought triggered by this movie is: In Hitler's Germany, as this movie is about, lies spread because truth was banned. While this was tragic and desperate, it was, in some sense, perhaps not the worst in terms of dynamics, since people still had the hunger for truth, which made the system unstable and capable of breaking down overnight. As a comparison, modern-day misinformation might not be as harshly maintained but is much more stable and stubborn, because what is lacking is not truth but people's interest in truth. People only want to live in their own belief systems and see what they want to see. Hitler's Germany was a system trying to brainwash people using involuntary lies, while modern-day misinformation is made of voluntary lies spread by people whose brains were already washed by whatever belief systems they belong to.

October 29, 2025　　# A Minor English Issue

Another minor language feature (or habit) I don't quite like is sentences such as "Barcelona lost 2-1 to Real Madrid". I don't have a solid "theory" against it, but I would consider it much more natural to change "2-1" to "1-2" when talking about "Barcelona ... to Real Madrid" (namely let the numbers appear in the same order as the teams to which they belong), or rephrase it to "Real Madrid beat Barcelona 2-1" (namely swap the teams if one prefers to use "2-1", perhaps for showing the larger number first).

October 31, 2025　　# Movie: Bugonia

Watched the movie Bugonia. Categorized as an absurdist black comedy, it is about two lunatic conspiracists' crazy abduction of a CEO whom they believe to be an "Andromedan" infiltrated the human race. While it does arouse my curiosity as to how, if ever, would the CEO escape, the last 10 minutes or so, which seem to directly confirm the lunatic ideas of the conspiracists, are beyond my comprehension. Maybe that's what an absurdist black comedy is meant to be. Overall, it's a movie well worth the 50¢ I paid (since I have a membership), but not a penny more. [Notes (A comment from @ThanksAMovie on X which I agree, especially the "uncomfortably real" feeling): I watched Bugonia too, what a wild ride! The whole idea of two conspiracy nuts, kidnapping a CEO because they think he's an alien is so absurd, yet it somehow feels uncomfortably real. ]

November 10, 2025　　# Martin Gardner on Cranks

「We all know there have been occasions when top scientists ridiculed ideas that later proved to be sound. We all know that great scientists have held opinions, both in and out of their specialized fields, that turned out to be hopelessly wrong. Let us not waste time belaboring the obvious. Nor must we forget that for every example of a crank who later became a hero there were thousands of cranks who forever remained cranks. We must not forget that for every outcast theory raised to respectability by a scientific revolution there were thousands of crazy theories that permanently bit the dust.」—— Martin Gardner (in Science: Good, Bad and Bogus)

November 12, 2025　　# Movie: Back to the Future

November 21, 2025　　# Movie: Now You See Me: Now You Don't

Watched the movie Now You See Me: Now You Don't. It's about eight magicians fighting against a criminal network controlled by Veronika Vanderberg, the head of a diamond company. It is an action movie with the extra freedom of using magic tricks, and it is enjoyable. How many of the magic tricks in the movie are realistic? I don't know. But I do know that one particular but crucial piece of the trick is dubious: The magicians tricked Veronika into a box (on the ground) that moved her onto a stage (also on the ground) and yet fooled her into believing that she was in an elevator down to her secret base (deeply underground). This is not possible since nothing short of altering physical laws can possibly use a surface movement to fake the vertical acceleration and deceleration that is inevitable and surely familiar to Veronika for a ride to her base.

November 22, 2025　　# Movie: Rental Family

Watched the movie Rental Family. Among all the movies I watched this year, including those I didn't write about but considered good, such as Nuremberg, this is my favorite. It is heartwarming and in the category of Japanese movies which I generally like, but it's much more absorbing than a mere heartwarming movie thanks to a few witty plot twists that surprised me ‒ among them, the "structure" of Shinji's (the boss of Rental Family) family and the way Phillip (the main character) got released were the most impressive. Last but not least, the ending scene in which Phillip found out what was inside the shrine which he showed curiosity about before, was philosophical and I liked it.

November 26, 2025　　# Movie: The Running Man

Watched the movie The Running Man. It's not quite new in terms of ideas, as it's similar to The Hunger Games and, to a lesser degree, The Long Walk. But the devil is in the details and it's fine to watch one more in the genre. There are three elements in this movie I would like to comment on: 1. AI generated fake videos that serve propaganda purposes are particularly alarming in the today's world. This element is therefore very relevant. 2. Amelia, who started as a firm believer of the propaganda but quickly embraced the truth is, I hate to say though, quite impossible. It is almost never so easy for rationality to defeat brainwashing. This element is therefore over-optimistic. 3. With the Network as despicable as assumed in this movie, the wristband the running man wears will certainly carry spying functions for the Network, thus guarantee the death of the running man whenever the network sees fit. This element is therefore not very thorough.

December 4, 2025　　# Ads in Movie Theaters

Last weekend, I brought my daughter and son to a Regal theater, at which I had a membership, to watch the movie Zootopia 2. It turned out I had more to say about the ads before the movie than the movie itself. As a frequent viewer at Regal, I know there are 27±2 minutes ads (merchandise plus previews) before a movie ‒ unthinkable 20 years ago, but something I have already get used to nowadays, and I always arrive 20 minutes after the listed time to skip most of them and yet keep a buffer should the theater considerately reduce ads (which never happened though). But I was shocked by the amount of ads before Zootopia 2: a whopping 50 minutes! I suppose it's because it's a kids' movie and it's hot, but to milk it in a greedy way to such extremeness is like the saying of a Chinese idiom "杀鸡取卵" (kill a hen to get an egg). I heard people impatiently whisper "come on!" or "again?", and I think some of them will become more hesitant to set foot in a theater again. [Notes (A comment from @vegastarlite17 on Threads): I went and saw Zootopia 2 yesterday at Regal and was confused by that too. And I got to the theater early (as I always do ‒ I'm one of those "if I'm on time, I'm late" kind of people I guess), so I was there even longer. My showing started at 3:30 and I swear the movie didn't actually start till like 4. Like, I know they always have previews, but that was crazy...]

December 9, 2025　　# Einstein and Newton (by ChatGPT)

Asked ChatGPT to draw an anime style picture of Einstein and Newton drinking coffee together:

December 27, 2025　　# Movie: The Housemaid

Watched the movie The Housemaid. It's a psychological thriller that normally would be at most marginal as far as my interest is concerned, because I genuinely dislike mentally crazy and illogical characters, let alone a major one that is almost inevitable in a psychological thriller. But I ended up enjoying the twist in the plot in which the person that seemed to be mentally crazy and illogical turned out to be the mastermind of the story, and that was smart.