For any teachers heading back to school next week worried about how to deal with the proliferation of AI use by students at home, you might want to remind yourself about “Flipped Learning”

If student use of AI for homework is making it hard to assess how much learning there has been, then setting classroom style learning tasks for home study may be helpful. The classroom activities can then revolve around homework style tasks and problems, and short assessments, which will be a more reliable method of formative assessment because AI can't be used.

This doesn't have to be a complete teaching style change — normal homeworks can be set, but only mark them for completeness or effort, and restrict grading to tasks that are done in the classroom.

=> https://www.tes.com/magazine/teaching-learning/general/what-flipped-learning

I don't really understand how to learn music. Or arts in general. Because I am a linguistics researcher I know how people learn languages (you don't really “learn” them), and I understand how people learn things like math or sociology, which is completely unlike language. But music is a bit like language and a bit like math. I'm having a lot of fun with musicology (the equivalent of linguistics, as opposed to language learning); but just like studying grammar is an entirely different skill and wholly unrelated to the process of becoming fluent in a language, or just like researching sports science is a different skillset and unrelated to becoming good at playing a sport, so also analysing the structure of music is an entirely different skill than actually being able to produce it. I understand how the former is done, but the latter? It baffles me.

Shinobue books will often have titles like “The joy of shinobue” or “Gentle shinobue for everybody”. Then there's the reverse psychology way of appealing to customers: Toki Tatara's Oni-ren (“demon training”) drills carry the implication that if you survive these intense exercises from hell, your skill level will go up. But does either rationale necessarily follow?

Language is a special thing because it's an instinct, like walking. A baby exposed to language will acquire it without thinking. Contrary to popular belief, adults also acquire language not through analysis or drills, but intuitively through use; essentially, your provide material to trigger and feed the instinct, then you get out of the way, and let your subsconscious do the work. Formal exercises like grammar drills, duolingo etc. are a red herring and a waste of time.

The worst part of the pointless exercises is the “fullmetal alchemist law of equivalence fallacy”: the idea that if you pay a high price, that must mean you're getting a quality thing out of it. No, sometimes you're just getting scammed. Boring grammar drills feel like you must be making progress, because they’re boring. You did the pain, so you should get the gain, right? Wrong, language acquisition happens pretty painlessly actually. It feels like something that goes in the background when you're focused on something else. You're trying to understand the uncaptioned new season of your favourite series to see what happens, not trying to “learn English”. When you realise it, English has happened to you.

This is very unlike learning (say) to embroider, or to solve calculus problems. A baby exposed to embroidery or calculus will never get anywhere. Not even writing works like language. Most skills have to be studied, learned, not simply acquired.

But music is complex. A baby exposed to music won't pick up an instrument and produce music-passing noises without instruction (I think ??). But they will definitely dance and sing, and intuitively be able to tell what type of music is meant to be sad or upbeat or relaxing. Music seems to sit halfway between instinct and artifice.

Some approaches to music are a bit like language acquisition, or like embroidery. I'm thinking of the type of folk music environment where people learn mostly by being given an instrument and a handful of simple instructions, and then get basically thrown in the middle of a jam, sink-or-swim, with no theories or formal drills of any kind. This type of music learning focuses on the ear, on intuition and musical sensibility; which feels quite sensible to me since music is a sound and feeling thing, not a sight and think thing. Then at some point your music group is trying out a different raga and that's when you learn how to play in the other raga, or even what is a raga.

Then there's the traditionalist academic conservaitoire type education, of course. Music theory, sight reading, scales, chords, drills, études. A teacher from this tradition will tell you sternly, don't just go and try to play popular songs on a random instrument, you'll suck. Get a firm grasp of the fundamentals, then you can play any song you want from sheet music. Delay your enjoyment for (a year/ five / ten years), do the work first. This is a bit like the art teacher who says: don't try to draw animes and cartoons, you have to be able to draw realistically from still life before you can play with abstracting features into cartoons. If you go straight to cartoons you'll suck. Now here's five workbook recommendations to work on your anatomy and perspective…

Approach the one, and approach the two. If you want to learn how to make music, which one? If you mix them, then how much of which, when, in what context?

It's easy to dunk on the academic approach but when you've been drawing animes for a while and every single time your faces end up deformed in a way you hate, you start kinda yearning for some repetitive anatomy workbook that promises you it will finally make your faces look like faces. Maybe if I do these scales every day for six months I'll finally be able to jam in a way that will feel like music, rather than random noises that don't fit with the track?? It's easy to think that music should be purely aural and intuitive, and I'm sure this is true at some essential level, but for very complex music like Bach I feel like I can appreciate it much better after learning theoretical concepts—and while watching a graphical visualisation of the counterpoints.

And then there's some even more mysterious effect where binging too much on music theory for a few weeks has increased my intuitive sensitivity to music. It's not that I now go, “oh indeed here the composer has subverted the progression from a subdominant chord to a counter supradominant augmented inverted borrow of the Locrian mode, a bold move 🧐”. No, I still can't tell what key a pop song is in, let alone whatever the heck is happening with the chords and modes and all that. But without me being able to analyse it in any way, Terra's theme from Final Fantasy VI now has made me cry. Multiple times. I first played Final Fantasy VI decades ago, Terra's Theme is great but it never made me cry before. I have no idea how or why this happens. Maybe it's just being in increased contact with music at all that expands one's sensibility, not the theory itself. But it doesn't feel that way; it feels like learning abstract concepts with the rational mind has primed the intuitive mind about what to pay attention to, like my subconscious was listening to the 8-Bit Theory videos along with me. That may be purely imagination on my part, of course.

Then again, the notion of “hell-training” has serious issues with selection bias and assuming causation. “My teacher yelled at me constantly while I did two hours of solfège chords on piano for two years straight, and I became a good pianist. So that's how people become good pianists”. This ignores all the other students who quit along the way, and fails to consider if there's any other ways that people demonstrably become equally good pianists, without the yelling, maybe without even the scale drills. Maybe if you do 2 hours of anything on the piano every day you become a good pianist? Or maybe not literally anything, but maybe less boring things would also do?

Which I guess is the basic idea of music pedagogy approach the 3: modern iconoclastic methods. Methods that believe the academic approach kills the music, starves it from all creativity and originality and joy, and makes traumatic bugbears of what should (in a moral sense) be a form of play and fun bonding. The iconoclasts often will chase spontaneity and joy first, encouraging dancing and whole-body involvement, and offbeat stuff that can border on corporate team building exercises. But hey, who knows. Maybe juggling balls before holding onto my flute will help me relax and make my kan register less strained?? I feel about musical education the same way I feel about my sex life: dunno fam no idea how any of this works, I'm open to try anything as long as that mysterious chemistry hits.

Unlike the case with language acquisition I don't think the repetitive drills are best thrown away in the compost piles of history. My daughter is an artist I admire, and her sketchbooks are filled with, say, one entire notebook only of hands in various positions, another just with sketches of shoes, or houses, etc. But as a mother I also know better than anyone that my daughter has been drawing for fun and joy since she was, like, 5; she doesn't draw as a duty, she draws as a distraction, as procrastination, which is the same sweet spot where language acquisition happens. I would escape math class by secretly reading books under my table; my daughter would draw. I became an academic, and she an artist. When I tried to learn to draw, I perceived it as a highly frustrating activity; nothing looked like the way I wanted, and the process to improve it felt like an impossible mountain to climb. For my daughter, drawing can get frustrating at times, but overall it's what she does to relax when something else is frustrating her. Climbing the mountain is a pleasant hiking stroll to air her head.

This is very much comparable to how language acquisition happens best through binge-worthy material: hours of activity is the king, whatever you can find that keeps you engaged for a huge fuckton of hours is what will get you there. Of course, the real problem is how to find input material that is 1) compelling to you in particular while being 2) sufficiently intelligible that you can engage with it at your level. Transpose it to music (pun intended): I don't think one can become an artist or musician without nurturing that sense of enjoyment of the process itself. Any music method that keeps you engaging with your instrument in any way gets a huge advantage against the competition, in my book. But of course if you keep doing the same thing forever you won't advance. Question is what kind of musical activities can be compelling for you in particular, while still developing skills upwards? What activities are engaging and beneficial? Sometimes it feels like boring works best—it's less boring to play a piece at speed and wholesale, but when I'm unable to do that despite repeated attempts, then working on it bar by bar in slow motion seems to get me there. But if that's all that I did all the time, I'd burn out fast.

I worry about the musical intuition, the sensibility. Some people believe sight reading and playing by ear are mutually exclusive, learning to read scores would ruin your aural sense of musicality. I think it must be more like my daughter, who seems to build her artistic sensibility both with the “folk” method (intuitively by imitation and exposure—she used to spend days binging on art tutorials on youtube, drawing along coaches) while also using the “academic” method (by reading on colour theory or doing perspective work, for example). I don't see how learning one thing would ruin the other, though of course some people are more naturally inclined towards one thing or the other. But one can probably mix and match, try one way when the other isn't working; I think nothing stops you from learning chord progressions academically but solos intuitively, for example.

I guess some sort of balance is warranted, but I don't want to just say: “they all have their place”, that feels like too easy a solution, too facile. There's no cosmic balance reason why every method should necessarily be as valuable or effective as the others. Who knows? Maybe it is just like language acquisition and all those drills aren't doing anything, and you could just have been doing fun intuitive explorations all along and it would work even better at training musicians. The conservatoire people know a lot more about music than I ever will, maybe they're right and and you can only really get fluent in an instrument if you do solfège over scales every day for ten years.

Purely through my own bias, I tend to believe the folk method must be the best supported; clearly the academic approach works for training musicians in the European classical tradition of the 18-19c., but that's an incredibly narrow definition of music, while folk methods have been used for everything from indigenous sacred music to Bulgarian choirs to Afro-American rap to Brazilian repente to Indonesian gamelan, and much else besides. The problem is my trichotomy comes apart at the seams when you look at it more closely. It's not like older traditions don't have drills or hell-training methods, for example, even if less intellectualised than orchestral conservatoire principles.

Maybe the key is to go to the repetitive exercises very deliberately, with a specific goal in mind. You have to treat boredom as costly, and be thoughtful about how to spend your daily bore budget. Doing drills because they're hell-drills is a mistake, and extrinsic motivation (like grades or diplomas or a sense of clout) is downright counterproductive. But they become intrinsically motivated when you're trying to achieve a piece, and there's a weakness you understand and want to address. Like, my daughter filled endless pages with shoes because she was already drawing scenes that she wanted, except she kept being frustrated with how the characters' shoes looked like. I'm very glad to have found Toki Tatara's drills on dynamics right now because it's super clear to me how much her rendition of Sakura benefits from that type of dynamic phrasing, and I envy that, I want to steal her technique; I want to be able to do dynamics like her in my own Sakura. And it's very transparent for me that if I can apply that crescendo-decrescendo shape to repetitive long tones, that will make me able to do the same to the crunchy minor seconds of Sakura. This feels very different than unthinkingly doing scales every morning in the hopes that it will make me a good musician somehow.

Crucial to this is that you have to do the exercises with the deliberate intent of actually getting good at the thing you're exercising. If you're not improving, the exercise isn't working and should be reconsidered. This sounds silly to even say out loud, but the psychology of training is kinda fucked up, it's actually deceptively easy to fall into a “duolingo” mindset, a Protestant work ethic mindset, where the suffering is the point, basically in a moral sense. You define yourself as somebody who is “bad at anatomy” or “bad at timbre” and you're not really taking in consideration what life could be if a few weeks from now you become competent at anatomy or timbre. Your definition of “myself” would change, you won't be able to hide behind “ugh I'm so bad at this”... anymore, and that's scary. But that scary place is where you want to go. It's important to not take the eye from the ball, to not let suffering become, perversely, a kind of end in itself, a part of your personality, a brag (“yeah I've been doing 2 hours of scales every morning for a year, it's hell… [smugly]“).

Thinking about it as martial arts training: the point of shadowboxing and bagwork is to punch the other girl in the face. You have to want to punch the other girl in the face. If you're just standing there and punching randomly at sparring you're doing the other girl a disservice, too, you're teaching her bad habits, neither of you is learning boxing. You have to be actually trying to win the match. If you can't evoke that crave, all the shadowboxing in the world will be just a cardio routine. If you're not yearning to play a piece with good tone, all the tone exercises in the world won't make good tone happen.

The danger of the academic method is pedestalising suffering for its own sake. By the same token, the danger of the joy-based modern approaches is iconoclasm for its own sake. Not every icon is as clasm-worthy as the others. Iconoclasm is great when it improves something, otherwise you're just being a contrarian for the sake of your self-image as a contrarian. Sometimes traditional methods are kept around just for the sake of tradition even when they're bad; but sometimes traditional stuff gets abandoned just because it's old, when it's actually well-motivated. And the danger of the folk intuitive approach is plateaus and sameness, I suppose. In Japanese folk for example there's a tendency where “living treasures” (more or less “geniuses”) emerge every so often, get treated basically as gods (sometimes literally), and everybody else just tries to imitate the geniuses. Maybe one can use one of the 3 practice approaches to escape the limitations of the others when they become a drag, like, eyes on the ball: do whatever feels more appealing to you as long as it keeps being engaging, but if you start feeling like you're not improving, try one of the other approaches; just make sure you're actually trying to get somewhere. “Drill and hope” probably doesn't do much.

Note: I am not a believer in BadWrongFun™. I do not think that you are a bad person if you like things that I don't like. This is not a hit piece on your taste. But it might be a hit piece on your frugality. Read on.

A stellar tea described

As I sit here in my office, I'm sipping a lovely cup of 南京雨花茶 (Nánjīng Yǔhuā chá, Nanjing Yuhua tea). This is a famously subtle, light tea that needs patience to allow flavours to build up before they can be fully appreciated. When you first take a sip it's almost a disappointment. The liquor is pale like spring straw, and the taste is thin, almost watery. A hint of sweetness, a touch of nuttiness like chestnut, maybe a ghost of toasted pine. It's clean, cool, vegetal, and it vanishes almost immediately.

You could be forgiven for thinking this tea's reputation is grossly overrated.

But then you wait. You take a second sip a while later. And things have changed. The flavour is now clear; the thinness has fattened up. The sweet chestnut nuttiness now builds on a foundation; a kind of tingly basis on the middle of the tongue. The pine note has sharpened, giving ghosts even of dill weed: bright and resinous. And at the back of the tongue a strong umami note is beginning to build.

Sip after sip the taste develops. The sweetness transforms into a cooling finish that coats the back of the throat. The nuttiness develops into something stronger: think almonds, but raw, not roasted. The umami strengthens into something like a delicate vegetable soup's broth. Every sip layers over the previous, changing the flavour with each exposure.

This tea is not loud. It is patient and requires patience to appreciate. As you sit with it, patiently sipping, it shows off the molecules it arranges on your palate sequentially, one after another. The finish stretches for almost half a minute: a faint, sweet, yet astringent dryness that makes you reach for the next sip.

It's a tea that begins as nothing, but slowly, patiently, becomes everything. It is a true world-class green whose reputation is well-deserved.

...unless...

Unless, of course, you put milk into it. Or sugar. Because milk and sugar do to fine teas what the law at the end of Rush's “The Trees” does:

And the trees are all kept equal by hatchet, axe, and saw.

Milk in particular is the great leveller of tea. It is the hatchet, the axe, the saw, the chainsaw, and the forest fire that keeps all trees equal by force. If you're a fan of milk in tea, however, you likely won't understand this or believe it. So today I'm going to give you the science. And if you still want to drink your tea with milk and/or sugar (and there is nothing wrong with this!), I'll be saving you a lot of money in the bargain!

The lesser ruination

The addition of sugars to green tea has a direct, measurable negative effect on its “phenolic” compounds, the very core of its flavour profile. Sugar cuts away approximately 1% of the free radical scavenging activity of tea's phenols per 1% of sugar added. So you are, in effect, paying for a full symphony orchestra, but then smearing glue over the instruments that play the notes.

If you are the kind of person who brews the tea together with the sugar, instead of adding it afterwards, there's another effect that may come into play.

Tea brewing relies on diffusion. Flavour compounds move from an area of high concentration (the leaf) to lower concentration (the water). Dissolving sugar into the water changes the osmotic environment that the tea is diffusing into, subtly altering the extraction dynamics.

The result could be (the physics is sound, but there has not been any direct study of it in tea that I've seen) that fewer of the tea's volatiles are extracted. You have to make up for it by brewing for longer. And that causes the more unpleasant flavour elements to concentrate, ironically turning your tea more bitter because of the sweetener being present.

The greater bringer of devastation

Sugar in tea is ketchup on cordon bleu cuisine. It's a negative, but it doesn't stop the flavours from appearing. It merely reduces our experience of them.

By comparison milk in tea is a wrecking ball swinging through a garden shed. It leaves nothing worthwhile in its wake.

Let me explain.

At the heart of milk's devastation lies a class of proteins called caseins, which make up about 80% of milk's total protein.

These caseins form large colloidal structures known as casein micelles. Their surfaces are rich with proline residues, which have a unique affinity for phenolic compounds. And this isn't a weak affinity. It's robust, multi-point, non-covalent cross-linking acting through hydrophobic interactions and hydrogen bonding. Which is an appropriate pair of words to end that sentence on since the effect is vaguely like a hydrogen bomb in its impact on flavour.

The subtle complexity that forms the unique signature of each fine tea comes from tea polyphenols (TPP). When milk is added, the casein micelles sweep in and bind to these polyphenol compounds, effectively removing the “free” polyphenols from the tea infusion. This forming of larger complexes decreases the availability of free TPP. What is perceived as “smoothness” in the mouthfeel is, in actuality, the erasure of the fine-grained profile that gives the tea its depth and complexity. The tea's delicate astringency (the building block of that flavour development I described above) is chemically neutralized at the molecular level.

Even worse, the TPP-casein binding doesn't just affect taste perception, it also suppresses and traps aromatic molecules using the same mechanism. The aerial release of the many tea volatiles is significantly suppressed by the simple addition of milk; the very aroma of the tea gets locked up before it can ever reach your nose.

As a final kick in the teeth (yes, from a wrecking ball) there's some scientific evidence that the binding of caseins to tea flavonoids reduces their antioxidant capacity and potentially their bioavailability. So not only are you flattening the flavour of a fine tea and trapping its aromatics to reduce its lovely scent, you are also paying a premium for the bioactive compounds you're about to remove anyway.

Moneysaver

The tea I started with, Nanjing Yuhua, sells at time of writing for US$55 for third-grade tea to almost US$200 for the top grade per 500g (roughly a pound) at one randomly-selected online shop. And that's the grades you can buy outside of China. The very best grades, from specific sites, picked and processed by famed masters, etc. will sell inside China (basically unavailable outside) for an order of magnitude more. It's expensive, is what I'm trying to get across.

And the flood of casein assassins your milk has unleashed into it has taken everything that makes the tea worth that cost and removed it. Indeed it may have even reduced that tea to a quality that is lower than a robust cheap green (the kind of coarse, bitter autumn chop from unnamed plantations that sells for next to nothing). Even the lowest grade of the Nanjing tea is ten cents per gram, while the highest grade you're likely to get outside of China is almost half a dollar per gram. An autumn chop is fractions of a cent per gram. And with milk, the autumn chop might actually taste better. And sugar isn't much better. Maybe the sugared Nanjing tea will taste a bit better than equivalently sugared autumn chop, but it won't be two orders of magnitude better.

So if you really do like to drink your tea with milk and/or sugar (and again I have to stress: there is absolutely nothing wrong with this!), save yourself a lot of money and buy the cheap autumn chop. It will likely taste better, and the money you save on the tea could be put to better use buying some really nice silk wall scrolls or something.

Preamble: Words have meaning. Grammar signals meaning. Pay very close attention to the title. I worded it the way it is for a reason. Make sure you understand what I actually wrote in the title, instead of what you wanted it to read, before moving on. Note also that much of the discussion here is based on Chinese sources because—get this!—only Chinese sources have anything meaningful to say about what a term “really means”. Westerners trying to claim what it “really means” are just making idiots of themselves and revealing more about their thought processes than they reveal about Chinese ones.

A capsule history of 白左's proper meaning

In 2010, the pseudonymous “Li Shuo” coined the term 白左 (lit. “white left”) on the social platform Renren in an article titled “The Pseudo-Morality of the Western 'White Left' and China's 'Patriotic Scientists'”. At birth the term referred very narrowly to young western leftists who sympathized with the communist revolution pre-1949 and came to China to assist it. It was very much a pejorative term but it was very specifically applied to a very small number of people.

It was also a term that came from a self-identified right libertarian. Put a pin on that. We're going to circle back around to this.

As is usual in language, and doubly so in the modern Internet era, there was a rapid shift in meaning, starting in about 2013. It no longer referred to this one, specific group from history, but rather became a generalized label. The implied criticism morphed into the subtext of people out of touch with reality; people who spout lofty ideals while being blind to the real-world problems around them.

The big explosion in usage started in 2015 as bewildered Chinese netizens watched the social fallout from the refugee crisis in Europe. It is unfortunate that, from my perspective, they derived the wrong conclusion from this, criticizing, for example, Germany's “open door” policy as a case of bleeding-heart saviours ignoring reality to everyone's detriment. (Note: I don't think that Germany handled the crisis well, but I don't reach the conclusion that some Chinese netizens reached that Germany shouldn't have accepted the refugees at all.)

This big explosion continued in 2016 as bemused Chinese observers divided on which was worse: Hilary Clinton's so-called “political correctness” or Trump's populism. (Note: both were considered bad. They weren't deciding on which they supported, they were deciding on which of the two was the worst.) In that period, 白左 finally settled in a relatively stable meaning as a criticism of western identity politics.

Now let's add the wrong meaning

Here's where we circle back to the origin. In 2017 the term was added to the Urban Dictionary with an already divergent meaning. It was largely correct, but it already contained the seeds of how the term would be read in the west: right wing. UD rapidly had definitions added that included equivalents to “libtard”, “woke”, and other very American views on life. This is the unfortunate product of people not understanding several key things and instead focusing on the first use of it by a self-proclaimed libertarian right-wing guy.

However it wasn't until 2021 that Tucker Carlson's use of the term to attack Democrats that 白左 became part of mainstream western political discourse. Ironically on the right wing. (I find it personally hilarious that a 电视脱口秀演员 like Carlson, a veritable 流量奸商 or 右壬, didn't introduce other terms from Chinese that were as harshly critical of the right like 川建国 or 懂王 being used to describe Donald Trump. It's almost as if he was cherry-picking Chinese criticisms of the west to only attack one side. Almost.)

This is why most westerners believe that Chinese people are right-supportive. Because one Chinese political epithet that was poorly-understood and badly-translated was weaponized by the Anglophone right and used as an unsubtle bludgeon against their opposition. All while ignoring the far less subtle open critiques of the American right.

For purposes of this essay we will be sticking with the correct usage. And if you don't think the Chinese usage of a Chinese term used in Chinese net haunts is the correct one, get out of here. This blog isn't for you. I'm sure there's some white supremacy sites you'll like better. Like Faux News or the New York Times. Or maybe Storm Front.

Note: I'm not saying that study of the term's evolution and abuse in Anglophone circles is not a valid field of study; that's sociolinguistics in a nutshell, in fact. I'm saying I'm focusing on the Chinese usage of a Chinese term because the abuse of language by barbarians is out of scope. (Yes, the use of “barbarians” is a joke.)

The interesting spin-off

While the American left was reacting badly to the American right weaponizing a foreign term that neither side fully understood, the Chinese use of the term, with the rise of 网左 (Internet left) as a concept, started to be applied domestically as a criticism of overly dogmatic Chinese leftists. Observers tracking trends in Chinese cyberspace consistently document 白左 and 网左 appearing across political discussions, with trend reports confirming this usage as recently as late 2025. Being branded 白左 was in effect saying “you're so dogmatically left that you're like a white person”.

So a term that started life as a criticism of a historical group of people by a right-libertarian, that then mutated as a criticism of perceived impractical leftists in the west (getting internalized at that stage by the west), and then mutated further is now a domestic criticism of Chinese people by Chinese people.

But ... why? Why is this term so long-lived and so adaptive?

Here's where I get personal

The reason is ... white people don't really have a great reputation in non-white circles. It's a shock, I know, but you don't. And yes, right now, I'm addressing white folk. Even the white folk that have “good intentions”.

See the problem is that a whole lot of white people have good intentions. But they also have a degree of arrogance that is staggering. It was white people, for example, who set back queer culture in China, losing three decades of careful diplomacy that was paying dividends in recognition and acceptance ... until an arrogant LGBTQ+ group in the USA convinced a group in Shanghai that a pride parade, one that didn't have permission from authorities, was how you get results.

And they weren't wrong. There were definitely results. And the queer community in China has suffered for it nationally. About 40-70 million queer people (according to UN-aligned estimates), who were finally making positive steps toward recognition and acceptance, are back being suppressed, closeted, and and viewed with intense suspicion and revulsion. The only thing that hasn't been reversed as a result of that disastrous American intervention is the medical position on homosexuality, et al. We're thankfully not reverting back to the stage where being queer is a mental disorder that can be “cured”...

Did they mean to do this? OF COURSE NOT! Hell, I'll go a step farther. They weren't the whole reason. Rather like how there's a whole host of machinery inside a gun that has to work in concert to expel the bullet from it, there was a whole host of public security frameworks and public opinion shifts that were part of the sudden reversals in LGBTQ+ rights in China.

The thing is, that machinery in guns needs a trigger to be pulled to put it into action and send that bullet on its way. And the same was needed for the sudden shift in LGBTQ+ rights in China. The Shanghai affair was the trigger. The Chinese state, in its modern form and in much of its imperial past, has operated on a simple premise: unsanctioned public confrontation is not a tactic of persuasion, but a challenge to authority. The methods of response have shifted; the underlying logic has not. The pattern is consistent across history: method matters as much as or more than the message. Even when the state was leaning toward acceptance of queer culture, despite the already dubious status it had as “foreign ideological infiltration”, the open defiance of holding a public protest without permission was a uniquely potent trigger that led to the sudden, drastic, tragic reversals.

The sad fact of the matter is that good intentions and five bucks gets you a small coffee at Starbucks. What matters is outcomes, and the outcomes of the 白左 set are largely negative. The “white left” believes that just being “in the right” is enough; they're generally living in safe environs (by world standards) and think they know things better from their cruising altitude of 30,000ft than boots on the ground.

They're very much a model of people out of touch with reality, who think that having their heart bleed is enough for them to be a force for good, who ignore reality in favour of ideals and slogans. They're the Red Guard, in short. They spout slogans and ideals, without regard to physical reality, and leave misery and death in their wake.

On the title

The title of this rant is On the toxicity of “白左” or “white left”. Note that it's not the white left. It is the quoted term.

That, in the end, is what this essay is really about. Yes, it contains vituperative criticism of white “liberals” and “progressives”. (And, naturally, of the white right.) But I want to focus back on the term. I am, quite self-awarely and ironically, using the term to diagnose a pattern even as, starting now, I warn against its reification.

I've explained why the term has proven so long-lived and adaptive. But the more important question is: should it be? It gained traction because it described a real phenomenon. It was short, pithy, and largely accurate from the perspective of its original users. And it could be deployed across a wide variety of contexts.

That, however, is precisely where the problem lies. Its adaptability allows it to serve legitimate criticism of a genuine political tendency, but it's just as easily wielded as a bludgeon by the Western right (but who cares about barbarian duckspeak?)¹ to attack ideological opponents: “See, even Chinese netizens think libtards are bad, LOL!” And it's used, too, to beat down sincere leftists who need guidance in praxis, not dismissive labels and silencing. Its very pithiness makes it, in my view, a textbook example of Orwellian “duckspeak”: catchy, universally deployable, but ultimately a substitute for thought.

It becomes an excuse to shirk our duty to educate, to guide, and to build toward a more coherent, humane future. Just like the sloganeering of the 白左 themselves.

¹ I will personally send 500g of my favourite tea to the first person who figures out this deep cut of a joke!

Trafik Kazası Kusur Oranınan İtiraz

Sistemlerin her zaman kusursuz çalıştığına dair o tuhaf inancımız, ufak bir trafik kazası geçirip de Tramer sisteminde “Yüzde 100 Kusurlu” ilan edildiğimiz gün paramparça olur. Bir makine, yoldaki o görünmez çukuru, karşı tarafın sinyal vermeden şerit değiştirmesini veya o anki fren refleksini göremez; sadece kağıttaki iki boyutlu krokiye bakar ve faturayı size keser.

Hukuk ise makinelerin bu kör noktalarını düzeltmek için vardır.

Hatalı bir kaza tutanağının faturasını ödemek zorunda değilsiniz. O %100'lük ağır kusur oranını, bağımsız bilirkişiler ve Sigorta Tahkim Komisyonu aracılığıyla değiştirmek mümkün. Olayın sadece metal bir çarpışma değil, bir hak arama mücadelesi olduğunu unutmayın. Sürecin nasıl işlediğine dair harika bir yasal döküm arayanlar için şu kaynak çok ufuk açıcı: https://www.tuvahukuk.com/trafik-kazasinda-kusur-oranina-itiraz/

#hukuk #trafikkazası #hakaramak #tazminat #tramer #adalet

Coming back from office yesterday (9th April) evening around 8.30 pm, as usual, I had my earphones plugged in listening to a podcast. I was just 10-15 minutes away from home walking on the footpath. A man approached with a usual pitiable expressions and said something in frail voice, which I couldn't understand as I had earphones in, and being apathetic that I am, I just passed by ignoring. After going few steps ahead I thought let's just check if he needs monies or information or something else. If he asks for money, I am out. I can try to help with information.

Once upon time, when I was waiting at a bus-stand, I had dodged a scam by offering to get a man a meal when he claimed to have stuck in Bengluru who refused the meal after walking with me for few minutes towards a restaurant. Point being, I was kind of ready and confident that I can dodge these kinds.

So I went back, he was around the same place only, but I noticed a woman and a girl child with him. I asked him “What? What do you need?” He said, “Hindi, hum marathi, hindi samazega kya?” (Here onward we spoke in Marathi only, following is English translation.) Me: “ohh, then let's talk in Marathi only. I can understand.” He: “wow, you have met like a god, no one here is understanding the language or helping. We had came a couple of weeks back here from Hyderabad and we worked at the construction site for last two weeks but contractor betrayed and is not paying a dime. It is now not possible to feed ourselves here, we are going back home but do not have means to carry out the long journey.” The accent seemed little familiar. Me: “Where do you want to go?” He: “Washim, Akola.” Now, to give a little context, Washim is just an hour drive from my hometown and thus I know area a little too well. I am at least familiar with major town names, have directional sense. I immediately thought to myself, how coincidental? Maybe I can probe more and make sure about the details. But being from nearby area there was already the development of a soft corner. He was winning, without even trying. Moreover, having traveled multiple times by train I know the how hectic and long the journey can be. It is a more than 24 hrs and there is no daily direct train to Washim. Me: “Where in Washim?” He: “Aasegaon Pen” I had in recent past visited Lonar crater and coincidentally a family friends in-laws are from a village named Maslaa Pen. That village was basically in-route from the Lonar to hometown. So I remembered the name well. Me: “Is it near Maslaa Pen?” (Because of same suffix, that was an obvious guess) He: “Yes, there is Karkhana (factory) there”. There was puzzled look on his face, probably saying, how do you know so better. Me: “I am from Pusad” They all got relieved hearing that. He reiterated that I have met him like a god ( now I think that could have worked too well). He: “I am embarrassed to even beg like this with (in front) of wife and a child. Never thought I will have to see this day.” And few more lines on the same line. The woman also pitched in now. She: “My sister was given to (married to a guy from) Kali Tembhi, but after her passing away we are estranged now. There is not much connection. (My guess, Kali Tembhi is supposed to be nearby Pusad, I am not particularly aware, there are multiple Kali nearby.) I think, by this time, I had already decided subconsciously to help, but still wanted to do more checks. Me: “So how are you going to go now?” He: “There is a train to Nanded at 11.” Me: “Hmm, it will take 24 hrs to reach” He: “Yes. Then from there another train to Washim and then bus to Aasegaon Pen” Me: “We have family friends from Maslaa pen, surname is Deshmukh” I got my phone out and searched for Aasegaon Pen on google maps. It showed around where I had hoped it would, and I also searched for Maslaa Pen and it was nearby, the details were checking out. I asked for the phone number, he gave a number, I called that number, that rang but it wasn't his handset. No one answered. That was a red-flag. He said, he might have made a mistake. Then he asked for my number and rang my number. I asked if he has UPI, he said he does not. I still copied the number and checked on the Gpay, and at least it was not registered there. I asked for name – he said – “Sunil Pawar”. Now I have saved this as 'Sunil Pawar Scammer? Aasegaon Pen', and the number is 9075**8790. He: “See help as you can.” He did not specifically ask for money or food or anything. Seeing that it is already around 9pm and train scheduled around 11.30pm, it was not prudent to offer dinner at some nearby restaurant, cause in here, it takes at least 1.5 hrs to reach railway station by city bus. I was still not so sure, and I remembered I only have a couple of hundred rupees notes in my pocket. He repeated the same sentence again a couple of times. The woman chiked in that it is already late and they need to reach station also. This was a case of 'an appeal to urgency' I did spot that and it did raise a red flag in my mind but I guess the my emotional self had already took over, I took out the pocket got 2 notes out. Told them I have only this much right now. I was kind of glad also and guilty at the same time, I wasn't so sure of my decision. Gave him the notes, told him I will call you to check if you reached. I immediately took the leave, thinking about the encounter. I thought, even if fraudster ₹200 is not going to kill me and make him millionaire, anyday better than indirectly giving away to some Vantara island. Make-believe to feel better about oneself. ₹200 in (अक्कल खातं) learning account.

I did call that number a day later and later 2 times also, it rings but no answer. I was earlier not inclined to put out the number in the post, but I guess I don't care about the privacy of the individual.

Mercedes-Benz Aracınızı Neden Sıradan Bir Tamirciye Teslim Etmemelisiniz?

Otomotiv dünyasında teknoloji o kadar hızlı ilerliyor ki, geleneksel tamir mantığı artık iflas etmiş durumda. Özellikle bir Mercedes W205 (C Serisi) veya W213 (E Serisi) kullanıcısıysanız, aracınızın aslında tekerlekleri olan devasa bir bilgisayar ağı (CAN-bus sistemi) olduğunu bilmelisiniz.

Mekanikten Elektroniğe Geçiş

Eskiden bir arıza olduğunda usta motoru dinler ve sorunu bulurdu. Bugün ise durum çok farklı. Örneğin, dizel bir Mercedes'te AdBlue sistemi veya NOx sensörü en ufak bir hata verdiğinde, motor kendini korumaya alır ve aracı çalıştıramazsınız. 9G-Tronic şanzımanınız vites atarken hafif bir vuruntu yapıyorsa, sorun dişlilerde değil, şanzıman kontrol ünitesindeki (TCM) bir yazılım adaptasyon kaybında olabilir.

Bu tür sorunları çözmek için elinizde İngiliz anahtarından çok, gelişmiş yazılımlara ve lisanslı donanımlara ihtiyaç vardır. “Arıza lambasını söndür, yola devam et” mantığı, lüks segment araçlarda geri dönülmez ve on binlerce liralık beyin hasarlarına yol açar.

Nokta Atışı Teşhis ve Doğru Müdahale

İşte bu yüzden, Ankara'da Mercedes'iniz için bir servis ararken dikkat etmeniz gereken en önemli kriter, servisin teknolojik altyapısıdır. Küresel otomotiv parçalarının en büyük üreticilerinden biri olan Bosch'un standartlarını taşıyan bir servis, aracınızın dilinden en iyi anlayan yerdir.

Orijinal Bosch KTS arıza teşhis cihazları kullanarak, tahmine yer bırakmayan, nokta atışı çözümler sunan ve gereksiz parça değişimlerinin önüne geçen Mercedes Bosch Servis Ankara hizmetleri, aracınızın yazılımını ve donanımını korumanın en akılcı yoludur. Yüksek mühendislik ürünü olan aracınızı, o mühendisliğin gerektirdiği donanımla buluşturun.

Mercedes-Benz Aracınızı Neden Sıradan Bir Tamirciye Teslim Etmemelisiniz?

संदिप खरेंची माफी मागून सादर करीतो

प्रत्येकाच्या घरामध्ये एक तरी (भोंदू)बाबा प्रत्येकाच्या डोक्यावरती घेतला त्याने ताबा प्रत्येकाच्या जीवनामध्ये कुठली तरी चिंता प्रत्येकाच्या डोक्यामध्ये कसला तरी गुंंता प्रत्येकाच्या पत्रामध्ये दोषारोप नशीबा

प्रत्येकाच्या डोक्यामध्ये ओसंडून भक्ती प्रत्येकाच्या प्रश्नावर लगेच यांची उक्ती प्रत्येकाच्या व्याधींकरता यांच्याकडे थांबा

प्रत्येकाच्या आश्रमी उत्पादनांची जंत्री प्रत्येकाच्या खिशाला स्वतःहून कात्री प्रत्येकाच्या तर्कावर यांच्या उलट्या बोंबा

फिटावेत जर तरी शब्दांचे देणे एक तरी विडंबन असे लिहावे बहाणे प्रत्येकाच्या पानी कशी विशुद्ध प्रतिभा?

Securing the Future of Real Estate Investments in Türkiye 🇹🇷

Managing a global real estate portfolio requires more than just acquisition; it demands a sophisticated understanding of local judicial review and market dynamics.

At Pi Legal Consultancy (PiLC), we have published a comprehensive deep dive on Medium regarding Rent Determination Lawsuits (Kira Tespit Davası). This is an essential tool for landlords to align their income with current market values after the 5-year legal cap is lifted.

Key Takeaways for Investors:

Mandatory Mediation: Understanding the procedural requirements effective since September 2023.

Court Valuations: How judges calculate fair market value while applying “equity discounts” for long-term tenants.

Strategic Representation: Why working with a specialized real estate dispute lawyer is critical for international owners.

Authored by our award-winning team, currently serving as a consultant for the European Commission and a partner for the World Bank Group.

Explore the full roadmap on Medium: 🔗 https://medium.com/@pilclawturkey/protecting-your-investment-a-comprehensive-guide-to-rent-determination-lawsuits-in-t%C3%BCrkiye-322d046abd70?postPublishedType=initial

#PiLC #InternationalLaw #RealEstateDispute #InvestmentStrategy #TurkeyLaw #Wordsmith #LegalWriting

Long time no write! This is a blog to publish updates on my projects, so that's exactly what I'll do here.

Regex engine

Right now I'm writing a fast regular expression search engine in Rust. In case the reader doesn't know what a regular expression is, they allow specifying some rules about what some text should look like (e.g., think “starts with H”, “has 5 letters”), and then you can reason whether a text follows them (like the words “Hello” or “Hopes” do), or search for strings fulfilling the rules within a larger text. In our case, the regular expression to specify these rules would be H[A-Za-z]{4} (“H” followed by 4 letters).

There are quite a few software libraries that implement regular expressions in Rust. To name a few:

• regex: the most widely used, pretty fast.
• fancy-regex: supports more features.
• regexr: tries to get the best of both worlds, fastest implementation.
• resharp: quite custom-built, fast implementation.

I ran a benchmark consisting on generating various lengths of random sequences of A, C, G and T and then searching for all (possibly overlapping) matches of the regex ATG([^T]..|T([CT].|G[^A]|A[CT]))*T(A[AG]|GA) (which recognizes possible forward open reading frames). The results are these:

• regex: 8.8 MB/s, slowest.
• resharp: 65 MB/s.
• My crate in progress: 99 MB/s.
• regexr: 222 MB/s, fastest.

If we replace that regex with ATG(...)*?T(A[AG]|GA) (which matches the same regions but uses the lazy *? metacharacter for a more concise representation), then we get:

• regex: 8.8 MB/s.
• resharp: doesn't support that metacharacter.
• My crate in progress: 109 MB/s, fastest.
• regexr: 5.5 MB/s, slowest (why?).

regex and resharp had also the highest overhead, in the hundreds of microseconds, while both regexr and my crate could compile the regex in about 20 microseconds.

I would like to work a bit more on this crate. Specifically:

• Support capture groups, which the other crates do and I think is pretty much an expected feature of any regex library.
• Stabilize it some further. I'm using cargo llvm-cov and cargo mutants, but I may resort to cargo afl to weed out bugs even more aggressively.
• Make it faster. I have some tricks up my sleeve that could manage gains.

Career

I'm working as a Resident Physician in Psychiatry. Also trying to get a Master's degree in Biomedical Engineering. Pretty exciting stuff going on in that front.

Vera, a stats and probability professor gets caught up in what is literally a series of unfortunate events (A Low Probability Event) which changes the world. In what is essentially a post-apocalyptic story, she joins Agent Layne, of the Low Probability Event Commission (LPEC) to investigate the casino they suspect is behind it.

This story works on a scale both cosmic and personal. Like an anti-superhero story, LPEC is a nod at gross government overreach in the name of national security, saving the world, etc.

The first part of the book has some quite graphic depictions of bizarre deaths as a first person account of the Low Probability Event, which nearly put me off reading on. I'm glad I persevered to the end though.

#books #horror #body-horror

Haklarınızı Şansa Değil, Profesyonellere Bırakın

Hukuk, “hallederiz” denilerek geçiştirilemeyecek kadar ciddi bir alandır. Bir davanın kaderi, yazılacak tek bir dilekçenin detaylarında veya kaçırılan küçük bir yasal sürede gizlidir.

Zeki Şimşek Hukuk Bürosu; Aile, Ceza ve Gayrimenkul hukuku alanlarındaki uzmanlığıyla İstanbul'da müvekkillerine şeffaf ve sonuç odaklı avukatlık hizmeti sunuyor. Davanızın büyüklüğü ne olursa olsun, doğru strateji ve etkin savunma ile her zaman bir adım önde olun.

Hukuki sürecinizi güvence altına almak için üsküdar hukuk bürosu sayfamızı ziyaret edin ve profesyonel ekibimizle hemen iletişime geçin.

Once at a Hbf there were some immigrant-looking folk (Turkish, as it turned out) selling traditional candy like, in a super pushy way, and I went talk to them half because I like sweets and half because I like being sweet-talked (hey the latter is a super rare experience in Germany, yes even including salespeople, I knew something was sus with that couple but I like to live dangerously ok. Yes, she was pretty. haterz gonna hate~).

So the lady was like at the top of her game, asked about my country, praised my tattoos, told relatable stories about her own life etc., and she was so bright about showing me the vegan options, and made me try like half a dozen different flavours of halva. (It was genuinely delicious). She was a great conversationalist and I had a pleasant time chatting with her for a long while.

So finally I decided to bring home 10€ in caramel halva. This is where the scam hit: she was already packing it but at the minimum quantity of 100g, which was some ridiculous abusive price, 38€ or something. At this point I wall up and put on my best bimbo face to claim that this 10-buck bill is all I have. It's obvious that it's a lie and she knows that I know that she knows it's a lie, this is a glove slap: I mean what are you gonna do about it, call the cops? So the man of the pair approaches and starts a spiel that they've already cut the halva so now I have to pay. So I say with the most blatant cara de pau I can muster that oh well, my train is about to leave, and I give them the warmest goodbye smile and a wave, and leave them protesting without looking back.

Only afterwards I realise that I had tied up the woman for a good fifteen minutes that she could have been hustling, plus I got to try a significant amount of halva of various flavours, without paying a cent. She was good at the game so the sample portions were quite generous, too.

The lesson we learn from this is, you gotta roll with the punches; your story can't be static, it's a tool not a script. Con artistry is a dance, at the first sign of resistance from the mark you have to change your step. They really should have cut their losses and given me a miserable thumb of candy for 10€ profit, I had opened myself a weakness when I said “gimme this much in candy” without checking the price/kg first. But thanks to their all-or-nothing commitment to the script, I ended up indulging my sweet tooth for free and out-scamming the scammers, purely by instinct. And if they're smart they'll think twice before trying to con a Brazilian again lmao (I mean the Germans are right there—)