Independent Thinking

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Believe, Believe: A Poem that Predicted Our Age of Fear

I want to share a poem by Bob Kaufman titled “Believe, Believe.” Although this poem was written decades ago, its warning remains deeply meaningful for what is happening in our society today. “Believe in this. Young apple seeds, in blue skies, and electric cities.” Excerpt from “Believe, Believe” by Bob Kaufman (© 1996 Eileen Kaufman, Coffee House Press). Full poem available at Poetry Foundation . The author’s creative background was shaped by the Cold War era, following the rise of McCarthyism. At that time, the whole country went through an “anti-communist witch hunt.” Opposing communism was indeed beneficial to America, and as someone who comes from a communist country myself, I understand the many evils of that system. However, during that period, anyone suspected of “sympathizing with communism” or having “left-leaning ideas” could be investigated, lose their job, or be blacklisted. The author was one of the rebellious young poets known as the Beat Generation. Throug...

The Trojan War: From Myth to Reality

Ancient Greek mythology is an interconnected system of myths. This vast system, composed of countless works featuring various gods, heroes, and mortals, includes many stories with the same backgrounds and characters, often described in different works by authors of different eras. The story of the Trojan War is a classic among many ancient Greek myths. Homer’s epics serve as the origin of the Trojan War story, but other works also supplement and detail it further. Although scholars questioned the authenticity of the Trojan War, perhaps considering it merely a myth, further archaeological and research work suggests that the city of Troy described by Homer and other ancient Greek authors might have been real, and a war may have possibly occurred. First, Homer’s work, the Iliad, reveals the spark of the Trojan War. The Trojan prince Paris saw the beautiful Helen in Sparta and then eloped with her, or, some say, kidnapped her and took her back to Troy (Cartwright). However, Helen was alrea...

The Impact of NVIDIA’s Project DIGITS

In the current era, humanity has fully embraced the age of big data and artificial intelligence. The processing and analysis of big data, as well as the development of foundational AI model training, not only rely on algorithmic evolution and innovation but, most critically, require hardware computational power. Previously, model training was conducted on standard servers or discrete graphics cards. However, companies like NVIDIA have continually introduced specialized AI chips and computers, ushering in a significant revolution in the hardware domain of the AI industry. Recently, at CES on January 6, 2025, NVIDIA’s CEO, Jensen Huang, unveiled a supercomputer named Project DIGITS, designed for AI researchers and data scientists. This small box, comparable in size to an Apple Mac Mini, is equipped with NVIDIA’s GB10 Grace Blackwell superchip (NVIDIA). Unlike traditional graphics GPUs, this product is specifically tailored for AI training and inference tasks. The fifth-generation Tensor ...

Completing Childhood: My Journey with Dalí

When I was a child, one of the many world-famous paintings I loved featured melting clocks, which left a deep impression on me, though I never knew the artist's name. At the end of June this year, my wife and I had the fortune to visit the Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, where I was astonished to realize that the masterpiece I had long admired was created by this very artist. Dalí, along with Picasso and Miró, is considered one of the three great Spanish artists of the 20th century. He was a surrealist painter. Throughout the exhibition, I could clearly see the artist’s obsession and dedication to his craft, as well as the evolution of his style across different periods. First, I visited Dalí's later works, mostly created between the 1960s and 1970s. Most of these pieces are surrealist works created using etching or lithography. The primary motivation for using printmaking techniques was their reproducibility. It is evident that in his later years, Dalí preferred printmaking as ...

The Double-Edged Sword of Social Media Connection and Isolation

I come from a country where freedom of speech is restricted. I remember when I first registered my Twitter account in 2017, it felt like opening a new world. Indeed, at that time, I fully experienced the allure of free speech; social media became a favorable place for me to express my political views. Because the topics I am interested in cannot be discussed on China's "intranet," I became engrossed in Twitter, spending significant time daily sharing my thoughts and opinions. However, I found that over time, a sense of isolation from my relatives and colleagues in real life began to develop. Firstly, the primary reason for this isolation was that the topics we focused on were no longer the same. My relatives and friends enjoyed their peaceful lives, discussing topics like cuisine, housing, cars, and children's education. Meanwhile, on Twitter, I was exposed to content I had never seen before in my life. I learned about massacres committed by the authorities against th...

A Journey of Religious Understanding through Humanities Courses

China is renowned for its strict government regulation and supervision of religious activities. The Chinese education system has no introduction to relevant teaching about religion. Therefore, having been born and worked in China, my understanding of the stories and doctrines of different religions is quite limited. My only fragmented memories consist of moments in my childhood when my mother would take me to temples to bow before the Bodhisattva and instances where I was taken by older relatives to churches for mass without comprehending the significance of these ceremonies. Upon completing Chapter 4 on world religions, I came to the realization that this was my first thorough study and understanding of the three major world religions, including Buddhism. (John 2:13-17. Jesus goes up to Jerusalem and cleanseth the temple from defilement) From Abraham becoming the bond between God and the Hebrews (Fiero 96) to Moses leading the Israelites out of Egypt back to Canaan and receiving the T...

Exploring My Ethical Frameworks: Principle of Fairness

Surgeons can determine life or death, and they may struggle to maintain their integrity when faced with significant financial temptations. For me, when confronted with this issue, if I were to accept a bribe when confronted with this issue, I would be causing someone who could have received an organ to lose their life, as well as inflicting harm on their family. Moreover, setting aside any professional ethical issues, such behavior goes against my conscience. My thoughts might never rest, day or night. Therefore, I would firmly and decisively say no to such actions without a second thought. First, let’s discuss the background of my ethical foundations. I come from China, where bribing doctors is a common practice. Many people have become wealthy through these means, and some of my relatives and friends as medical representatives still bribe doctors to get their drugs more frequently prescribed. I disdain such behavior because I hold unique cultural and contextual considerations. The Ch...

Embracing Freedom, Navigating Sensitivities: My Journey from Silence to Speech

I wanted to share some of my real experiences and thoughts here. I grew up in China and moved to the United States when I was around 30. I've always been critical of the Chinese government. However, under China's repressive political climate, with internet restrictions and speech control, people hardly have any means to express their political demands. The only option within China is to use what the government deems "illegal" VPNs to access social media like Twitter and YouTube. After arriving in the United States, I embraced freedom of speech and various social media platforms, frequently expressing my political views or criticisms of the Chinese government and the CCP (The Chinese Communist Party). However, the United States is a melting pot of cultures, with 5.4 million Chinese people ("2023 Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Key U.S. Census Stats"), not all of whom disapprove of China's authoritarian regime. In fact, some even admi...

Reflections on 'The Social Dilemma'

I was pleased to see so many former top employees of tech giants expressing their pessimistic views on today's social media and giving warnings to the world in this documentary. This is an excellent documentary shot in 2020, but four years later, such a "dilemma" has not been solved and is even more serious. Firstly, the documentary raised the issue of phone addiction, which I can refer to as "artificially created opium." The goal of software operators is to get users addicted to increase user retention time. The "culprit" here is the online advertising model. Rather than saying social media provides feeds for you to get more of the information you want, it's more accurate to say that the time users waste on social media is the real "feed" for platforms or vested interests, enabling them to earn more income. Secondly, why are users addicted to different types of social media? The documentary also mentions artificial ...

Should TikTok Be Banned?

“Your platform should be banned,” said Congresswoman Cathy Rodgers, setting the stage for the marathon five-hour-long Congressional hearing (“America May Be a Step Closer”). On March 23, 2023, TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew faced questioning from Congress members, with intelligence and legislative bodies from the Biden administration expressing fears that the Chinese government might weaponize American app-usage data. This situation was not the first time TikTok found itself in such a predicament (Perrigo). In 2020, then-President of the United States, Donald Trump, utilized the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to issue an executive order that required TikTok to stop operations in the United States because of national security concerns (“United States Pursues Regulatory Actions”). In response, TikTok filed a lawsuit against the American courts and secured a preliminary injunction against the executive order (“United States Pursues Regulatory Actions”). Despite granting TikT...

Yearning for Democracy: Tiananmen's Legacy

"Wearing a simple white shirt, dark pants, and carrying two shopping bags," he blocked a column of a Chinese military tank (Dunleavy). The Tank Man, known as the "Unknown Rebel," emerged into the global media spotlight after the violent crackdown (Iyer). This incident was a series of protests in Beijing, China, 1989, led by "university students, intellectuals, and workers" (Ray). These demonstrations aimed to seek "democratic, political, social, economic and other reforms" and garnered widespread global attention (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). The protests escalated from a scale of "100,000" students to "1 million" people participating (The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica). Ultimately, the tragic incident culminated in "Chinese soldiers and police storming Tiananmen Square, firing live rounds into the crowd" (History.com Editors), resulting in "hundreds to thousands of protesters being killed...

Reflections on the U.S. Military Withdrawal from Afghanistan

The United States has been an excellent international police, and since its founding, it has never had ambitions for wealth and land outside of its borders. Generally, once the U.S. completes its objectives, it withdraws. However, when the U.S. military withdrew from Afghanistan, the Taliban regained control of the country, and thousands of people gathered at the Kabul International Airport, hoping to evacuate. Many people chased after and even desperately climbed onto a U.S. Air Force transport plane that was about to take off, which shows that many Afghans either wanted the U.S. to continue its military presence or longed for freedom and democracy. " Afghanistan patrol " by The U.S. Army is licensed under CC BY 2.0 . There is a belief that the United States has brought freedom, democracy, and equality to the people of Afghanistan, and I believe this is indeed true. Unfortunately, my analysis based on the Economist Intelligence Unit data shows that since the U.S. military w...