Ten days is long enough for certain things to happen, and long enough for certain things to change.

Once you have gained a certain level of insight, you must learn to keep quiet. Do not analyze things for other people. Heaven gave you understanding so you could get yourself out of trouble, not so you could get involved in other people’s karma. Otherwise, it may rebound on you.

I came across this line while scrolling through short videos. I do not know where it originally came from, but it sounded unexpectedly deep, almost philosophical. Changing one’s fate against the grain of heaven has never been easy. If you insist on stepping into someone else’s chain of cause and effect, then unless you have the absolute strength to contend with destiny, you may not change anything at all—and may even invite punishment upon yourself.

It made me think of Socrates, and of many figures from history. Perhaps some things recorded as history were only coincidences. Or perhaps not.

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Toolbox

A few useful tools, websites, open-source projects, and some notes from actual use.

pua: making Codex and Claude Code work harder

https://github.com/tanweai/pua

This is a skill designed to push AI coding assistants into a more aggressive working mode. Its core idea is to simulate a workplace PIP scenario: the AI is told that it used to be a P8-level engineer and is now under a performance improvement plan, with 30 days to prove itself.

The pressure-setting sounds a little absurd, but it does seem to make the model more proactive, more complete in its output, and more willing to deliver higher-quality results. It supports mainstream AI coding tools such as Claude Code and OpenAI Codex. In actual use, the amount of usable code output can indeed increase noticeably. It is especially suitable for people who often use AI to write code but feel that the model is not “trying hard enough.”

supervision: a computer vision toolkit

https://github.com/roboflow/supervision

This computer vision library from Roboflow solves a very practical problem: how do you present model detection results cleanly and professionally?

It provides a rich set of annotation tools, including bounding boxes, masks, trace lines, heatmaps, and more. Colors, transparency, and rounded corners can all be customized. With only a few lines of code, it can produce annotated videos that look polished. It is model-agnostic and can be connected with Ultralytics, Transformers, MMDetection, and other systems.

For object detection, video analysis, and dataset processing, it is particularly convenient. It saves a great deal of time that would otherwise be spent writing visualization code by hand.

OpenScreen: a free alternative to Screen Studio

https://github.com/siddharthvaddem/openscreen

This is a very handy tool for recording product demo videos. Screen Studio costs $29 per month, while OpenScreen is completely free and open source. It covers the core needs: recording a screen or window, automatic zooming, manual focus, background styling, annotations, playback speed adjustment, and exporting in different resolutions.

The videos it generates come with refined backgrounds and smooth motion effects, making it suitable for product walkthroughs, tutorial videos, and feature demonstrations. If all you need is a “screen recording plus beautification” tool, and you do not require Screen Studio’s more advanced features, this is already enough.

awesome-design-md: a collection of design tools and resources

https://github.com/VoltAgent/awesome-design-md

This is a curated list of design tools and resources, including productivity tools, UI component libraries, design systems, color palettes, icon resources, font recommendations, and other things commonly used by designers and developers.

Everything is organized by category, so it is easy to search. Whether you need a color tool, an icon library, or a design system, this repository can help you quickly locate a suitable resource. It is especially useful for developers who need to build a UI quickly or find design inspiration.

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Reading Now

3-Minute Philosophy

Jonny Thomson / translated by Shen Chen

3-Minute Philosophy is an introductory philosophy book designed for busy modern readers. Its main purpose is to break the stereotype that philosophy is obscure and unreachable, allowing almost anyone to step lightly into the depths of human thought during fragmented moments—over a cup of coffee, or while waiting for the subway.

The book does not examine any philosophical theory in great detail. Instead, it uses short stories or brief passages to introduce a philosophical idea and invite reflection. Because of the limited length of each entry, its explanations naturally cannot be as detailed as the writings of major philosophers themselves.

So this book is best suited to beginners. If you want to understand a particular philosophical position more deeply, it will likely feel too shallow.

Meditations

Marcus Aurelius / translated by He Huaihong

Still reading this one. It feels rather dull to read. The overall sensation is like having Marcus Aurelius sitting not far in front of you, speaking continuously—except he is mostly talking to himself.

Since this is, in essence, a collection of self-addressed notes, reading it takes effort. There are indeed good passages and flashes of brilliance in the book, but finishing it calmly requires a certain amount of patience and steadiness.

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Worth Reading

Some blog posts recently encountered while reading around, along with a few thoughts after reading them.

What Is Philosophy?

https://sliun.com/whatisshit/

We became aware that when we became aware that we were aware, our awareness was not actually our own awareness, but an awareness that had been made aware; it was not an awareness that had not been made aware.

Philosophy is probably the thing that even philosophers cannot explain clearly.

This blog post is written in a very casual manner—casual in the sense of how it was put together—but it is also quite deep, at least to me. The question “What is philosophy?” is itself already part of philosophy.

Philosophy is too vast. Faced with that vastness, any attempt to define it in language feels like measuring the universe with a candle flame. From the brief information available about the writer, it is hard to determine their exact identity. But the writing suggests someone with expertise in law, philosophy, history, or a similar field. The prose is professional, and the thinking is sharp. It gives the impression of a professor-level figure.

Reading that kind of writing brings not only an intellectual shock, but also a sense of inferiority. The good part is that one gets to read, for free, writing that could have been put into a book.

Love Has No Standard, But Not Loving Does

https://mobius.blog/22377.html

The blog has recently been redesigned. The pages have become static, and the like button has changed as well. The icon to the right of the like button seems like it may lead to a random article, but without a hover tooltip, it is hard to be sure.

The reason this article is worth mentioning is the question it raises around the limits of language. Writing often aims to express something through words, but words have their boundaries. That is why other forms of artistic expression exist: painting, music, dance, performance, and even combinations of them, such as film and games.

This does not mean words have no power. But when facing something as layered as philosophy or love—things that feel like three-dimensional slices of time and space—purely verbal expression becomes difficult. A reader’s education, cultural background, and life experience can drastically change what they take from the same text. Without having lived through something, it is hard to truly “feel the same.”

So in my understanding, love is not just what is said aloud or written on paper. Even if it is written into a novel or screenplay, if that counts as love, it is at most an idealized version of love. Love needs an object that has been instantiated. It should not remain an abstract concept floating in the air.

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Fragments

Every time I open WeChat Reading, I habitually glance at the page number in the lower right corner to see how far I have read. Without realizing it, I have developed this bad habit: I keep checking, then mentally calculating my progress through the book.

Suddenly I realized that this is actually a sign of restlessness. I care too much about when I will finish a book, and in doing so I neglect the act of reading itself: What have I thought about? What have I gained?

Recently, while reading, I have also found myself thinking about other things at the same time. My attention is not focused enough. I do not know the exact reason. Perhaps I need some time to adjust before I can return to reading with real concentration.

This kind of restlessness reminds me of some blog posts I have read before, discussing how many posts or how many words one should write every day. Some even said that if they do not produce output, they will “get sick.” The world is indeed large enough to contain all kinds of birds. Were all the illiterate people in the past sick, then?

As for how much to write and what to write, when it comes to blogging, I truly do not recommend following other people’s advice too closely. If you write and act entirely according to someone else’s suggestions, then the blog loses your own soul.

Some accomplished writers say not to write about ordinary daily life. But they have already become immortals; can ordinary people really compare themselves to that? A blog is a reflection of the blogger. If you fabricate a persona, unless you are a professional writer, an ordinary person’s constructed image is easy to see through with even a little discernment.

So being yourself is the simplest way. You can imitate others, but there is no need to force yourself into becoming them.