(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

Speaking of Dingwang Tower in Changsha, I only knew it as a place to buy books, but today my mother told me a story that she tells every year to students who’ve just moved to Changsha for their studies:

During the Western Han Dynasty, Emperor Jing once wanted to sleep with one of his concubines after drinking, but unfortunately, she was indisposed at that time. The concubine commanded her maid to take her place. The emperor was drunk and didn’t notice the switch, and thus slept with the maid, resulting in pregnancy after just one encounter. (How similar to his grandfather Emperor Wen’s birth story!) Unfortunately, the mother’s status wasn’t elevated because of the son; instead, due to his mother’s humble origins, the son wasn’t favored by Emperor Jing. He was given the title of King of Changsha and, just like his grandfather, the unfavored son was sent to live far away.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

Today is Sunday, and with nothing particular to do in the afternoon, we visited the Greenburgh Nature Center to casually observe the flora and fauna. I’ve been here several times before, but surprisingly, I learned something new this time that I’d like to record.

Raptors

The most prominent area of the nature center features several large bird cages, housing bald eagles (America’s symbol), owls, and quail (which seems somewhat outmatched compared to its neighbors). From the information signs, I learned that raptors ( birds of prey) are among the few wild animals that can survive in urban environments because cities provide sufficient food sources (like rodents). However, they still face survival threats—being hit by vehicles or suffering from food poisoning (for instance, when small birds consume pesticides and are then eaten by raptors). The raptors here have all been rescued because they cannot live independently for various reasons.

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

Today was a special day. I had arranged for a group of my middle school classmates to visit me at school, and there was also a lecture by Hofstadter that I wanted to attend.

I arrived at the school gate at the agreed time, welcomed my classmates into the school, and then went to the lecture. The lecture was fascinating; Hofstadter used various Goldberg-style strange and complex mechanical devices to demonstrate his concept of “strange loops.” An hour flew by quickly. After the intermission, Hofstadter was late returning, and the audience began to speculate about what might have happened. Someone said there was a protest demonstration outside, and for Hofstadter’s safety, he had left early, bringing the lecture to a premature end. While everyone was expressing disappointment, I said, “Don’t worry, isn’t this lecture about ‘strange loops’? Hofstadter must just be taking a loop around campus and will surely return.”

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

On Monday morning while commuting on the train, I took out my e-reader and continued reading Hofstadter’s “I Am a Strange Loop” (setting a flag here - I should write a review later). In Chapter 18, the author uses the relationship between regions and ethnicities as an analogy for each person’s body and mind. He mentioned that Poland’s territory has been partitioned multiple times throughout history¹, but the Polish people still exist. The first line of the Polish national anthem is “As long as we live, Poland will not perish!”

(Translated from the Chinese version with the help of Claude.)

In the second half of last year, I visited several nearby ruins. I had planned to write about these trips, but due to my chronic procrastination, I kept putting it off until I almost gave up. Recently, I discovered a treasure of a content creator, An Zhengming. An article on Zhihu describes her as belonging to the “ruins painting school.” She wrote Non-Mainstream Art History, which includes several sections specifically about ruins. So, I thought I’d strike while the iron is hot and finally write about my visits to these ruins. Although the stories behind these ruins may not compare to those of ancient Greece or Rome, they have their own unique charm.

On 8/25/2022, Heroku announced that they are shutting down their free tier products, which include the free tier dyno that Bara runs on. As a result, http://bara.davidfeng.us/#/ starts returning 503 from 11/28/2022.

I built Bara, a Yelp-clone full stack site, as my final project from App Academy in 2017. It probably helped me get my first software engineer job at Oracle. I would like to thank Heroku/Salesforce for letting me using their free tier product for more than 5 years (2017-2022). I know this day would come eventually but when it actually came, I still felt sad.