For the Hong Kong Fire, we built an open, centralised database to preserve all verifiable information, news reports, footage, technical analyses, contractor details, volunteer/community support records, official responses, and follow-up developments.

Say what you want about the Left, but these people understand that institutions shape public consciousness and that the elites who run them get to determine what's promoted by society. These people almost instinctively understand that power and culture are in a circular feedback loop that's set into motion when just a handful of levers are pulled. So they pour everything they can into controlling those levers, because they so desperately want the power that comes along with it. The Left doesn't actually particularly care about the universities, Hollywood, Wall Street, Silicon Valley, or the various media outlets that all regurgitate the eternal Progressive omnicause. This is why they're leading all of these things to ruin. They're just tools for acquiring what actually matters, which is power. For a bunch of self-proclaimed egalitarians, the Left understands politics, hierarchy, and elite theory far better than the Right. And speaking of the Right, is it even fair to say "the Right" exists at all? There's just the "anti-Left", and these people only exist as a political "we" through the pure negation of the eternal Progressive omnicause. The anti-Left is also inherently anti-political. The only thing that crosses their minds is how to escape. "How do I get the government off my back?" they ask over and over again. "How do I keep more of my money?" "How do I get these people to leave me alone?" "How do I get the government out of X?" The anti-Left has precisely ZERO theory of politics and no governing agenda, because these people don't want to be governed at all. They want to abolish the very concepts of governing, and thus politics itself. They're essentially anarchists in the truest sense of the word, even more committed to the cause than self-described Anarcho-Capitalists are. At least those people have Hoppe. But politics does not disappear just because one side finds it morally repugnant. The anti-Left's commitment to anti-politics does not create genuine freedom or liberation from the state. It just creates a vacuum that inevitably gets filled by whichever group has the strongest will to power. And Progressives have a stronger will to power. These people will riot over a crackhead overdosing on fentanyl. They will claim that men can become women. They will declare that urinals are art and that Boston's City Hall is breathtakingly beautiful. They will murder their political adversaries in cold blood on college campuses and then go online to publicly cheer about it. They will declare borders invalid and chant Free Palestine. They will brag to you that Somalis built America, even as they claim America itself is uniquely evil and must be destroyed. And in the face of this insanity, the anti-Left's response is to meekly beg, "Just please leave me alone." More than anything else, they just want to escape from this madness. But politics is precisely that which you cannot escape from. Someone IS GOING TO decide what gets taught to children, what speech is going to get you canceled, what social behaviors get you sent to prison vs being given an honorary doctorate, what international borders exist and who controls them, what institutions are allowed to openly discriminate against, and what lifestyles are celebrated or mocked. Even the decision to "just leave people alone" is not an escape from politics. Choosing to "leave someone alone" is ITSELF a political decision made by whoever the ruling elites are, and enforced by the institutions they control. The anti-political anti-Left has either totally forgotten all of this, or they never understood it to begin with, which is why they are being systematically crushed, no matter how many elections they win.

If you're a Westerner reading this, please do not fall into the trap of thinking "oh, China is scared. Freedom wins again. We’ve got the AI race in the bag.” This idea that closed authoritarian systems cannot innovate needs to be challenged. There are countless examples in history of these types of societies innovating ruthlessly, relentlessly, and often faster than we care to admit. The Soviet Union put Sputnik in orbit and Yuri Gagarin in space while half the West was still debating whether color TV was a fad. Nazi Germany built the V-2 rocket and the first jet fighters under a regime that made today’s CCP look like a book club. Imperial Japan industrialized at breakneck speed under militarist control. And modern China? High-speed rail networks, dominance in solar panels, EVs, batteries, hypersonic missiles, quantum research, and now - yes! - frontier AI models. SURE, tech transfer and industrial espionage means China's rapid advancement wasn't achieved without an assist from the West but that doesn't mean that China cannot innovate because they have stamped out individualism and hedonistic self-expression. Talent responds to incentives. Authoritarian regimes can offer massive incentives to engineers - priority access to compute clusters, blank check funding, zero regulatory friction, and the blunt threat of consequences if you don't deliver. Read China's move as an escalation in the AI race. They're now treating their AI researchers the way the Manhattan Project treated its physicists - as national assets.

for startup founders with chinese (or hong kong) nationality who want to build in the US, this recent wave of news feels increasingly concerning. - bloomberg reports china is increasing restrictions on overseas travel for some top ai talent, and cases like manus suggest stronger control over founders and acquisitions. - in the case of manus, the government allegedly blocked a potential acquisition deal by meta, called the founder back, and then restricted their ability to travel abroad afterwards. - at the same time, the US is reportedly tightening parts of the green card process, with more cases potentially requiring applicants to return to their home country for consular processing. taken together, i wouldn’t be surprised if investors start getting worried about what happens when founders have to go back to their home country for visa/green card.

China is restricting overseas travel for top AI professionals in private firms such as Alibaba and DeepSeek, suggesting an escalation in measures intended to safeguard its technology and catch up to the US in a pivotal sphere. Government agencies have begun imposing restrictions on individuals involved in advanced AI work and considered strategically important to the country, people familiar with the matter said. bloom.bg/4uy8OPC 📷: Qilai Shen/Bloomberg

mom i finally met all my finc friends @fdotinc 😭🎉 canopy is sooo fun

rejected by a16z speedrun officially - citizenship asked during 1) initial application, 2) pre interview form, 3) follow up email, and 4) reconfirmed again in the final 10 min interview together with visa status - hongkongese, no visa, delware corp without china/hong kong business - told: “you’re solo founder and due to political change, we cannot fund it, but we like u/ur video” not sure if this is related to broader us-china tensions, or things like reports of china blocking the manus meta deal, but as a hongkongese faced political dramas in hong kong & just trying to build a career in the us, i unfortunately seem to be caught in the middle

the pre-interview form asked whether I had ties to china, unfortunately, as someone from Hong Kong, I fall under that category. surprisingly, china was the only country specifically asked about.

coglix labs website, cognition corgi ai-guided & gamified rehabilitation

We have to demolish the culture of intimidation for women in the workplace. 100%