Blogs

Ok it is definitely a clickbait. But as a native speaker of a language (Cantonese, Hong Kong/GuangZhou dialect) that does not have voicing constracts in its consonants, I had a real hard time in differentiate voiced and voiceless consonants when I started learning Japanese (which has the voicing constracts, and the voiceless consonants are unaspirated in native speakers’ mouths most of the time). It was >10 years ago and I still remember how many times I listened and pronounced voiced and voiceless consonants with a Praat installed in my computer, and looked at the spectrograms allllll day long. ...

坐立皆不適，忡忡何所憂？ 居毋患寒暑，食盡啖珍饈。 幼自貧窮慣，今唯前咎愁。 何如曲肱枕，淡飯敢焚裘。

情鍾隱學典難覓，眼澀抬頭日已斜。 古籍奇書尚能借，春秋有數問誰賒。

懶理職場獻媚密，歸來自聽雨連珠。 凡生笑我無心眼，漆吏知吾乃樂魚。 孔聖隨心不踰矩，詩痴久諷律無虞。 唯耽無益雕蟲技，最是優悠意氣舒。

The Courier and the truck; complement and substitute Although people say “this time is different”, there is something in common. In the ancient ancient times, if you needed a parcel moved across the country, you hired a body. The good courier had good strength to carry the parcels, strong legs, deep lungs, and a tolerance for going without (too much) rest. Those were the metrics. Speed was a property of the person, so you paid for the person who had the most of it. ...

The Yoneda Lemma The Yoneda lemma has been being complainted as “hard to understand” for a long time. Indeed it is not very easy, so I was trying to come up with a way to understand it more intuitively. Everyone knows the analogy by Ravi Vakil: You work at a particle accelerator. You want to understand some particle. All you can do are throw other particles at it and see what happens. If you understand how your mystery particle responds to all possible test particles at all possible test energies, then you know everything there is to know about your mystery particle. ...

分明昨日痾甚篤，費解今宵文采狂。 病體疑為煉丹鼎，丹成病好筆生光。

近世多鵲壘，鳲鳩豐尾垂。 鳲鳩施小利，鵲語改相隨。 客佔雖多地，東家尚有墟。 毋蹈楚王轍，魯莽贈烏騅。

寅時初夏雨，淅瀝擾休眠。 冷氣頭上響，炎風廳裡燃。 閒姑倚書案，久若坐針氈。 旦日還待呷，齋啡微苦漣。

童年夏必逢飛蟻，舍妹心驚急淚潺。 晚煮杯茶憶杯渡，青絲初白夢青山。