作者：Bruce
日期：2020年3月28日

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1. So I have been organizing my information diet for a while, and now I think I have created a pretty decent rss-based info flow that could cover most of the stuff I need to know and left out a lot of other insignificant sources. I have labelled them into ‘insights’, ‘long form’, ‘China’, ‘Art’, etc, hoping that it will help me stay focused on the important contents. But one thing that I found myself end up doing a lot is that I read the ‘easy’ or news-like pieces more often than ‘insight’ or in-depth pieces. This is not how I imagine as the latter is actually supposed to be the priority here. Something must be wrong. After scrutinizing my reading process, I realized that I have been defining the task wrong: it shouldn’t be achieving ‘inbox zero’, ie. to clear the unread list, but to actually read what’s worth reading. I should be more ‘picky’ about what I read, and only read what‘s definitely necessary and helpful. In other words, ‘not reading’ should have been the default- not the other way around. The only reason that I’ve been reading the less helpful pieces a lot is simply because there are a lot of them which constitutes a large portion of my unread list. It makes them seem more important than they actually are. In-depth contents take more time to write thus are less in numbers. So we might as well say, in terms of subscription, ‘less (in numbers) is more (important)’.

2. Bill Gates did a ‘ask me anything’ session on Reddit about COVID-19, and here are 31 questions and answers from that session summarized and posted on his website GatesNotes. Although I support his over agenda in terms of building a much stronger health system around the world, I found this FAQ session not very useful. He dodged the ‘difficult’ questions about China’s performance, favoritism to celebrities, etc., which is understandable but quite disappointing. For instance, the ethics of treatment is well-discussed in this nyt piece and this paper.

3. In general, the attitude in the west towards China’s handling of the outbreak has changed rather drastically over the past two weeks. On 13 March, when Ian Johnson wrote an opinion piece on NYT about how China has bought the West time and the West squandered it, he still felt a strong risk of being misunderstood. But as China’s newly confirmed cast dropped significantly and ‘China Aid’ going around the world offering medical supply and clinic experiences, the ineptitude of some Western leaders has, by contrast, made the forceful reaction in China more convincing and plausible than inhumane and excessive. Especially, if we take into account the great economic hit that China is taking in order to slow the infection in its population, it is almost admirable no matter what the real intention behind might be. (the twist now is the quality of the test kits from China which I don’t know enough yet.)

4. I hosted an epic 12-hour video chat room this week to get together with friends in different time zones. It was terrific to see how social distancing seems to have equalized the mental distance we have with any location. Another thing equally distributing now is the concern over the virus. We talked about it every single time someone dropped in during that 12 hours. I think this is the first in my life that people from different corners share such a strong feeling over the same thing at the same time.

5. Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, people behind basecamp (formerly known as 37 signals), hosted a live streaming event to share their experiences with remote working. I actually first knew about this concept from Jason a couple years ago, so I felt quite inspired to know they are still doing well with this somehow unconventional approach towards working. My biggest takeaway: do not try to simulate the physical world online, it should have its own set of rules; and when something doesn’t work, try also think about if that particular thing is the problem.

6. two thoughts:

   • If you record and transcribe a talk that you didn't understand the first time, you will often find out that it's only because they were talking nonsense. - Nice little demystifying practice you could do from time to time.

   • In art, we like everything to have profound meanings, so we call "object with more meaning" a "deeper object". But seriously, such practice is so bad and it is polluting our language, really.

7. Great little essay from Xiang Biao on the chain to grid reaction in China.

8. Snopes is providing a nice fact-check collection against misinformation about COVID-19.