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

Last weekend I took a half-day trip to Hartford, the capital of Connecticut. Here’s a stream-of-consciousness record with photos.

The Insurance Capital of the World

There really are quite a few insurance companies here, such as United Healthcare, Aetna, Travelers, and others. When I was working at Oracle and applied for paternity leave, the company said I needed to contact “The Hartford” - this insurance company is (obviously) headquartered in Hartford.

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

(Like the previous blog post, this one is also nostalgic.)

What Happened

On May 22, 2025, Mozilla announced that Pocket would be shut down on July 8th. I learned of this terrible news on May 26th, and my heart was shattered:

Woc, 天塌了！

— David Feng (@davidfeng88) May 26, 2025

Around 2010, when I first encountered read-later apps, I found them interesting on one hand, but confusing on the other: wouldn’t it be enough to just bookmark articles to read later in the browser? But after trying them out, I found features like cleaning up webpage formatting quite useful. Initially, I was torn between the free Instapaper and ReadItLater. Later, it seemed like Instapaper started charging, so I wholeheartedly embraced ReadItLater. In the early days, saving articles on iPhone seemed to require setting up a bookmarklet in Safari, which was quite complex. Later, perhaps when iOS opened up permissions and native apps became available, the user experience improved dramatically.

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

Yesterday I saw yihong’s tweet:

这个人真的太有趣了，读到这样的博客，自然而然的开心一天。https://t.co/8vjrZUvGcn

— yihong0618 (@yihong0618) June 16, 2025

This author documented his spontaneous idea to visit the nearest integer coordinate intersection to his location—30 degrees North, 120 degrees East. This kind of thing doesn’t really have much meaning—latitude at least has some natural significance, while longitude is purely arbitrary human convention—but it’s still quite interesting. This activity has a name: the Degree Confluence Project, with a pretty impressive domain name https://confluence.org/. Don’t confuse it with Atlassian’s Confluence or Confluent.

(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.”