There is an annoy trend in bike tail light. The vendors are making super bright LED tail light. The idea is the brighter the light, the easier it is for drivers to see, and the safer it is for the riders. But there is diminishing return to the brightness. It is no more safe when the light is bright enough to see one mile away, v.s. a moderately bright light that you can see from half a mile away. Instead, a very bright tail light causes big problem to the rider behind you. It is blindingly bright to follow other with these super bright light.

I have a new light that's somewhat bright. I decided to make some modification to similar frosted glass to make the light more defused and more comfortable to others. Here is the result

Simply scratch the plastic surface with a file or rough rocks. Don't be gentle. This is how my light looks like after I scratched it.

From a distance, there seems little difference between the two lights.

I hope we stop buying these super bright tail lights. If you have one, consider scratching it to make it more comfortable to look at.

2020.12.09 comments

In front of the stage filled with blue light, an exuberant crowd cheering and anticipating the speech from Joe Biden. First came Kamala Harris. She was beaming with her smile, congratulating the people for acting and standing by democracy. She introduced president-elect Joe Biden. In his speech, Biden declares he will govern as an American president, the president for all. “We are not enemies. It is time to unite. It is time to heal.” There is to be hope and possibility for all Americans.

After being bombarded for four years with obnoxious rhetoric and rancor of Donald Trump, it is a breath of fresh air to hear this. Civility has come back. Respect has come back. Biden has struck a conciliatory note. This is all the qualities I can hope for from a respectable leader.

Yet behind this julibrant celebration, I ended with the thought that this blue lighted stage is just a mirage. Despite the choice as a president for all, the condition of unity is not there. Those people he reaches out to will not hear it. The world is a lot more ugly than we hope. The illness of society is so deep, despite the best intention, the president will be helpless to heal.

I do not set out to write a negative essay. I am an optimist. I believe we are to confront the world’s greatest problem with our ingenuity, perseverance and resilience. Those who strive to act with integrity and righteousness will ultimately prevail. Our human nature is fundamentally good.

2020 is a difficult year. My optimistic outlook is severely tested. COVID-19, the novel virus that we initially assume mainly afflicts Asia, has unleashed to the world with vengeance. Socialization is to be minimized. It has fundamentally shakened the purpose of the city. I saw the once bustling downtown reduced to a ghost town. Working with my colleges is reduced to watching a grid of videos. I feel a piece of me has died.

The president should have been a leader to combat the pandemic. Instead he sabotaged the effort to control it, often acted brazenly even with cruelty. When he was criticized for his early failure, he took it out on WHO and reneged on the US' contribution. Scientists ignored and were pressured to serve his agenda. The White House stubbornly acts against public health best practices. Their irresponsibility ultimately led to the virus outbreak in the White House that sickened the president himself. I watched this unfolding with anger.

September 9th, 2020 is a defining moment in my life. In the morning, I noticed it was unusually dark outside. It is as if the sun has overslept and gotten up late. California was already ravaged by wildfire for weeks. Major fire was burning all around, destroying properties and choking us with smoke. The state struggles to get them under control. Still the darkness is unsettling. Dense smoke from fires as far as Oregon has filled the sky, turning the day into an apocalyptic night. I was profoundly dispirited. Even the sun has forsaken us.

The stakes of the 2020 US presidential election are very high. I fought for a resounding repudiation of Trumpism. The alternative, the vindication and mandate for Donald Trump, is unthinkable. After an excruciating delay, Biden has prevailed and Trump is defeated. Hope is restored. But has Trumpism been repudiated? It was noted that Biden has won the election with a healthy margin and the highest number of votes, a total of 75 millions, ever won in history. But Donald Trump has broken a record too. He won 70 million votes. 7 more millions of people have voted for him than in 2016. Despite all the lies, all the chaos, all the disastrous handling of the COVID-19 pandemic, these people have decided to double down on Donald Trump.

I’m dumbfounded on how Trump supporters can reconcile Trump’s constant lying. They were not anything subtle. Some claims are so laughable like Mexico is to pay for a border wall. How does Trump have a cultist hold on his followers? Is moral and integrity not a concern to them anymore? Perhaps it was digital social media to blame? Any public criticism is to be dismissed as fake news. Trump followers are free to create their own version of reality that reflects their hero’s delusional view. Conspiracy theorists can easily find validation among themselves. They will no longer be constrained by reality.

In many ways, there is no longer a common ground in this country. Biden has made an honorable effort to unite the people. Sadly it will not be recognized. The political outlook is continued polarization and pure partisanship. There will be a lot of instability as the balance shifts between the two parties. It is hard to see how this country is capable to set and achieve long term goals anymore.

The far right fraction is not the only problem. The far left has its own agenda to transform the society to their own ideal. They are not even a reliable partner in a coalition to defeat Donald Trump. I am frustrated that they are more motivated to rally against the Democrats who are deemed not sufficiently progressive, than to rally against Donald Trump.

I saw a lot of bad omen in 2020. A new year, a new president, will not easily turn this around.

The next day after the sky turned orange, daylight did come out the next day. The sun has risen again. But I can no longer take this for granted.

2020.11.09 comments

This morning a newsletter from a right wing media landed in my inbox. Usually I don't waste time on them. But something caught my eyes today. Something about "Trump Responds to Junk Intel Report". I followed a link to read further. It was an interesting trip to the right wing media land. It should make quite a bit of interest to people interested in journalism and social media. The keywords you are going to see - complete BS complete joke ridiculous this nonsense.

It was a short article. But I couldn't quite make out what it was trying to say. I noticed this wasn't an original article. It was only a cut and paste from another report. I followed the link to the original.

The article was written by Jim Hoft, founder of The Gateway Pundit. He was awarded the Reed Irvine Accuracy in Media Award and the Breitbart Award for Excellence in Online Journalism, according to his bio. The article is rather hard to follow. Much of it is interspersed with pictures, Twitter screenshots and videos. I decided to clean it up so that I can see the content. An excellent tool I used is Instapaper. Instapaper is an article clipping tool. The side effect is it strips away distracting ads and images, keeping only clean text. This is just what I need.

Don't worry if you cannot read the text. I will reproduce the entire content below verbatim.

The Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center Bill Evanina on Friday revealed information on threats from foreign countries in the 2020 election.

According to Director Bill Evanina Russia wants Joe Biden to lose!

What complete BS.

Bill Evanina is a complete joke.

Then Director Evanina added this:

The ODNI report was released in an official statement:

On Friday night President Trump was asked about this ridiculous government official’s report.

Trump respectfully SHREDDED this nonsense.

That's all. Jim Hoft has written only 76 words in this article. There are 45 other words in the title and subheading, and 245 words in quotes. Out of the 76 words, 24 words is a factual statement in the opening sentence. It leaves 52 words in the main content. A disproportionately large amount of them are emphatic expressions - complete BS, complete joke, ridiculous, this nonsense. There is really no space left to elaborate why. No word was written at all to explain why it is considered complete BS.

There are more words in the quotation that the article itself. A rebuke of the intelligence report is from a transcript of Trump's interview. He himself said, and you have certainly heard this before, nobody’s been tougher on Russia than I have ever. Be careful with the quotation though. Many of them are not quoted from source but quoted from other quotes. The article said "the ONDI report was released in an official statement, colon". But the official statement did not follow after the colon. Instead, it links to another right wing journalist' tweet, which includes a screenshot of the official statement from his smart phone. Right wing media quote from other right wing media a lot, with typos and grammatical mistakes all included. Indeed, I was led to this article from another right wing article that was a cut and paste of this article.

Perhaps these kind of writing are not entirely new. When you are in the supermarket's checkout line, your attention will be captured by tabloids on display. It is all about big picture, shocking headline and perhaps no real content. Now that these style evolved to right wing media festering in public policy space, when people utter "complete BS" throughout and make no effort and see no need to explain themselves, the resulting conversation can be scary.

Link to the article - https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/08/devastating-trump-responds-junk-intel-report-nobody-common-sense-say-russia-wants-donald-trump-win-video/

2020.08.08 comments

South China Morning Post is an excellent resource for international news coverage of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. They publish an up-to-date statistics of confirmed cases around the world. I have been following it for some time.

One pattern jump out to me. The most affected countries in the top of the chart, with the exception of Iran, are all developed, G-7 kind of countries. The initial origin is China. The next affected is South Korea. Now all Western European countries are following. US and UK are lacked by two weeks or so but their are steadily catching up. Keep scrolling down the chart, you will find the rest of the entire world with relative low number of cases. Big countries like Indonesia and Pakistan rank quite a bit behind. Bangladesh has 17 cases and Nigeria has 2. What does this pattern tells us? Is it counter-intuitive that rich countries are ravaged but poor countries are spared?

Skeptics may believe less developed countries simply don't test enough subjects and produce inaccurate number. This might be a factor. it might only be a matter of time when the diseases hit poor countries in a big way. My hope is this grim prediction will not turn out to been to be true.

What I believe is infectious diseases is the Achilles' heel of economic development. The movement of people within and to and from developed countries is an important driver of economy. It connects them into a big market and allow them leverage a large pool of human resources. But this is also a vector of spread of diseases. The better the connectivity, the faster it spreads. Urbanization improves productivity and innovation. Yet living close together is also risky from epidemic's perspective.

Less developed countries seem less affected for now. There are less movement of people to and from economic hub or within. The populations are more rural. This slows down the spread of diseases relative to big cities.

Developed countries also has the most to lose in economic break down. Since they produce more, the same percentage of reduction in productivity would have more effect than in other countries. How to develop a vibrant economy but at the same time minimize the risk of epidemic? Human interactions are crucial for modern economy. Yet this also make us vulnerable to outbreak. COVID-19 will not the last epidemic. Looking back in the past decades we have seen many large one. The future of our economy depends on strategies to mitigate epidemics that are to come.

2020.03.19 comments

For the most part, US was relatively removed from the coronavirus outbreak in China. Despite a small number of cases, most of them related to recent travel to China, officials assured people the risk of low epidemic here was low. When the case of Solano County patient was discovered, she has no history related to traveling and has been carry the disease undetected for days, it was a sign that our perceived immunity is over. Within two weeks, cases of virus inflections were reported all around Bay Area. Events, businesses and schools were scrambling with closures. Everything exploded. Now we are in full fledge pandemic.

I have been making all the hygienic and health precaution's, keep educating myself about the science of the disease and its social impact. It becomes obvious to me that the virus will soon touch all of us. Many of us will get sick. Some people will die. It is still inconceivable to think it will kill people we know, or even you and me. But there will always be a possibility. Vigilance is important. Young and healthy people have lower risk. But we shouldn't make too much assumption. No one is fully immune.

Seeing the inevitability of the spread, I feel strangely at peace. I stopped stressing out every time when there was a new case reported around us. I know the trajectory and how things are going to go. This is the time of a global pandemic. I want to live through it in the best possible way.

2020.03.15 comments