Interests: tech, health, cooking. Allergic to stupid tweets.
Singapore, London, New York
Joined March 2015
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Parenting Advice from Peng Li Yuan
The first lady of China, wife of Xi Jinping (dubbed as the Chinese Kate Middleton, often compared to Michelle Obama) recently shocked the National Board of Education with her statement about college exam results:
孩子的分数，永远不如教孩子学会感恩、学会做人重要！Háizi de fēnshù, yǒngyuǎn bùrú jiào hái zǐ xuéhuì gǎn’ēn, xuéhuì zuòrén zhòngyào!
A child’s exam results, is never as important as teaching a child how to be grateful and a good human being!
孩子正确的金钱观，家长如何培养呢？Háizi zhèngquè de jīnqián guān, jiāzhǎng rúhé péiyǎng ne?
For a child to have a correct perspective on money, how should a parent teach him?
把财富留给孩子，还不如把孩子变成财富！Bǎ cáifù liú gěi háizi, hái bùrú bǎ háizi biàn chéng cáifù!
Instead of leaving money for the child, isn’t it better to turn the child into wealthy individual?!
所以，留给孩子千万财产，还不如留给他这些：Suǒyǐ, liú gěi háizi qiān wàn cáichǎn, hái bùrú liú gěi tā zhèxiē:
Therefore instead of leaving your child millions worth in assets, why not leave your child these pearls of wisdom:
1、孩子，你一定要学会做饭。这与伺候人无关。在爱你的人都不在身边的时候，使你能善待自己。 — — （能独立生存）Háizi, nǐ yīdìng yào xuéhuì zuò fàn. Zhè yǔ cìhòu rén wúguān. Zài ài nǐ de rén dōu bùzài shēnbiān de shíhòu, shǐ nǐ néng shàndài zìjǐ. — — (Néng dúlì shēngcún)
You must learn how to cook. This has nothing to do with serving others. This is so that when your loved ones are not with you, you can take good care of yourself. (Ability to live independently)
2、孩子，你一定要学会开车。这与身份地位无关。这样在任何时候，你都可以拔腿去往任何你想去的地方，不求任何人。 — — （自由）Háizi, nǐ yīdìng yào xuéhuì kāichē. Zhè yǔ shēnfèn dìwèi wúguān. Zhèyàng zài rènhé shíhòu, nǐ dōu kěyǐ bátuǐ qù wǎng rènhé nǐ xiǎng qù dì dìfāng, bù qiú rènhé rén. — — (Zìyóu)
You must learn how to drive. This is unrelated to your status in society. So that at any time, you can go wherever you want to go, you are not dependent on others. (Freedom)
3、孩子，你一定要上大学，正规的大学。这与学历无关。人生中需要经历这几年，无拘无束又能染上书香的生活。 — — （一旦走进社会，就进入了市场。）Háizi, nǐ yīdìng yào shàng dàxué, zhèngguī de dàxué. Zhè yǔ xuélì wúguān. Rénshēng zhōng xūyào jīnglì zhè jǐ nián, wújūwúshù yòu néng rǎn shàng shūxiāng de shēnghuó. — — (Yīdàn zǒu jìn shèhuì, jiù jìnrùle shìchǎng.)
You must go to a legitimate university. This is not about academic results. You must experience these few years without cares or worries while getting an education. (Once you enter society, you enter the real world.)
4、孩子，你知道吗？足迹有多远，心就有多宽。心宽，你才会快乐。万一走不远，让书籍带你走。 — — （拓宽自己的视野，借助知识的视野。）Háizi, nǐ zhīdào ma? Zújì yǒu duō yuǎn, xīn jiù yǒu duō kuān. Xīnkuān, nǐ cái huì kuàilè. Wàn yī zǒu bù yuǎn, ràng shù jí dài nǐ zǒu. — — (Tàkuān zìjǐ de shìyě, jièzhù zhīshì de shìyě.)
Did you know…The more steps you take, the bigger your heart. If you have a big heart, then you will be happy. If you cannot go far, let books take you there. (Broaden your horizon with the vision of knowledge)
5、孩子，如果世界上仅剩两碗水，一碗用来喝，一碗要用来洗干净你的脸和内衣裤。 — — （自尊与贫富无关。）Háizi, rúguǒ shìjiè shàng jǐn shèng liǎng wǎn shuǐ, yī wǎn yòng lái hē, yī wǎn yào yòng lái xǐ gānjìng nǐ de liǎn hé nèiyī kù. — — (Zìzūn yǔ pín fù wúguān.)
If this world only had two bowls of water, use one bowl for drinking, and the other bowl for cleaning your face and underwear. (Self respect is unrelated to being rich or poor)
6、孩子，天塌下来都不要哭，也不要抱怨。那样只能让爱你的人更心痛，恨你的人更得意。 — — （平静地承受命运，爱你的人自会关心。）Háizi, tiān tā xiàlái dōu bùyào kū, yě bùyào bàoyuàn. Nàyàng zhǐ néng ràng ài nǐ de rén gèng xīntòng, hèn nǐ de rén gèng déyì. — — (Píngjìng de chéngshòu mìngyùn, ài nǐ de rén zì huì guānxīn.)
Even if the sky were to fall (no matter how bad your circumstance) do not cry or seek revenge. This will only make your loved ones heartbroken, and your enemies happy. (Accept your fate calmly, as your loved ones will naturally be concerned)
7、孩子，就算吃酱油拌饭，也要铺上干净的餐巾，优雅地坐着。把简陋的生活过得很讲究。 — — （风度与境遇无关。）Háizi, jiùsuàn chī jiàngyóu bàn fàn, yě yào pù shàng gānjìng de cānjīn, yōuyǎ de zuòzhe. Bǎ jiǎnlòu de shēnghuóguò dé hěn jiǎngjiù. — — (Fēngdù yǔ jìngyù wúguān.)
Even when eating plain white rice with soy sauce, use a clean napkin and sit gracefully (maintain proper dining etiquette). Even a basic life should be led gracefully. (Elegance and circumstance are not related)
8、孩子，去远方的时候，除了相机，记得带上纸笔。风景是相同的，看风景的心情永不重复。 — — （徐霞客之所以是徐霞客，不是因为走的路最多。）Háizi, qù yuǎnfāng de shíhòu, chúle xiàngjī, jìdé dài shàng zhǐ bǐ. Fēngjǐng shì xiāngtóng de, kàn fēngjǐng de xīnqíng yǒng bù chóngfù. — — (Xúxiákè zhī suǒyǐ shì xúxiákè, bùshì yīnwèi zǒu de lù zuìduō.)
When you travel afar, besides a camera, bring a pen and journal. The sights you see will look the same, but what you feel at first sight will never be the same. (The famous author Xu Xia Ge is who he is, not because he has travelled the most)
9、孩子，一定要有属于自己的空间，哪怕只有5平米。它可以让你在和爱人吵架赌气出走的时候，不至于流落街头，遇到坏人。更重要的是，在你浮躁的时候，有个地方让你静下来，给自己的心一个安放的角落。 — — （独立人格）Háizi, yīdìng yào yǒu shǔyú zìjǐ de kōngjiān, nǎpà zhǐyǒu 5 píngmǐ. Tā kěyǐ ràng nǐ zài hé àirén chǎojià dǔqì chūzǒu de shíhòu, bù zhìyú liúluò jiētóu, yù dào huàirén. Gèng zhòngyào de shì, zài nǐ fúzào de shíhòu, yǒu gè dìfāng ràng nǐ jìng xiàlái, jǐ zìjǐ de xīn yīgè ānfàng de jiǎoluò. — — (Dúlì réngé)
You must have your own space, but only up to 5 square meters. So that when you are fighting with your loved ones and walk out, you will not wander the streets and meet a bad person. More importantly, when you are angry and impetuous, you have the space to calm yourself down. (An introspective state of being)
10、孩子，小时候要有见识，长大的时候要有经历，你才会有个精致的人生！ — — （读别人的经历，找自己的经历。）Háizi, xiǎoshíhòu yào yǒu jiànshì, zhǎng dà de shíhòu yào yǒu jīnglì, nǐ cái huì yǒu gè jīngzhì de rénshēng! — — (Dú biérén de jīnglì, zhǎo zìjǐ de jīnglì.)
When you are young, you need to learn; when you are older, you need to experience. Then you will have a wonderful life! (Learn from others’ experience, then find your own experience)
11、孩子，无论什么时候，都要做一个善良的人。请记住，拥有善良，会让你成为最受上天眷顾的人。 — — （这种眷顾未必是财富与权势。善有善报，所报者，爱也。）Háizi, wúlùn shénme shíhòu, dōu yào zuò yīgè shànliáng de rén. Qǐng jì zhù, yǒngyǒu shànliáng, huì ràng nǐ chéngwéi zuì shòu shàngtiān juàngù de rén. — — (Zhè zhǒng juàngù wèibì shì cáifù yǔ quánshì. Shàn yǒu shàn bào, suǒ bào zhě, ài yě.)
Regardless of time (situation), you must always be a good hearted person. With kindness, you will be one that is showered with blessings; not with blessings of wealth or power but with kindness in return. (Kindness begets kindness)
12、孩子，笑容、优雅、自信，是最大的精神财富。拥有了他们，你就拥有了全部。 — — （这就是“贵族”精神。）Háizi, xiàoróng, yōuyǎ, zìxìn, shì zuìdà de jīngshén cáifù. Yǒngyǒule tāmen, nǐ jiù yǒngyǒule quánbù. — — (Zhè jiùshì “guìzú” jīngshén.)
A smile, elegance and self-confidence are the greatest personal assets. Have these qualities and you have it all. (This is called a spirit of “Nobility”).
debbiediscovers.medium.com/p…
Debbi Kay retweeted
AI has been quietly assembling a complete behavioral record of you. Might be worth opening it. I've created a prompted called 'Reflection Engine'. Here are 22 questions to unlock that data for you:
Like I said. Singapore is all in.
Even the Singapore Zoo is hiring an AI Specialist to build agentic solutions.
It seems like every company is trending towards hiring someone to build stuff that can help each department in the organization to work more efficiently.
Vibe coding experience with working solutions to showcase will come in handy.
My ex-intern is at GovTech working on this. Gov is all in.
S’pore to create a registry of AI agents for 150,000 public officers amid AI push bit.ly/4vnnIZa
Debbi Kay retweeted
Artificial intelligences do not undergo experiences, do not possess a body, do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships, and do not know from within what love, work, friendship or responsibility mean. Nor do they have a moral conscience, since they do not judge good and evil, grasp the ultimate meaning of situations, or bear responsibility for consequences. They may imitate or even simulate, but they do not understand what they produce, for they lack the affective, relational, and spiritual perspective through which human beings grow in wisdom. #MagnificaHumanitas
Coordinating a group trip is a nightmare once there are lots of people and dates. So I vibe coded my own date finder for an Ibiza birthday trip using @Lovable.
Here's a tutorial on how I did it, plus the exact prompt you can modify and reuse.
deborahkay.com/blog/how-to-v… – at Central Region, Singapore
Marvelling at the fact that my 79-year-old dad (@peterkay47) is still expanding MY vocabulary. Three generations in the family chat, and he's still the most intellectually curious 🫶❤️ – at Singapore
"As we integrate LLMs into our workflows, let us be deliberate: use them to augment, not abdicate. Keep thinking in the loop."
Agree. – at Singapore
1/A Nature editorial dropped a line last year that I can't stop thinking about:
"If writing is thinking, are we not then reading the thoughts of the LLM rather than those of the researchers?"
But the real story isn't about AI. It's about every "upgrade" we've made in the last 50 years.
2/The study behind it: 36 students, 256 EEG sensors, handwriting vs typing the same words.
Handwriting lit up theta and alpha bands across the brain — the frequencies tied to memory and deep encoding.
Typing didn't.
The motor act of forming letters was producing the cognition. Not recording it. Producing it.
3/The editorial's uncomfortable conclusion: writing a paper is how a researcher discovers what they actually believe.
The messy first draft isn't a step toward thinking.
It IS the thinking.
Which means every time we outsource writing, we're not saving time. We're saving ourselves from our own cognition.
4/That got me asking a bigger question:
If handwriting was a thinking technology we accidentally threw away, what OTHER thinking technologies have we discarded without realizing what they actually did?
The answer is: a disturbing number of them.
🧵👇
5/ MENTAL MATH
We stopped doing arithmetic in our heads because calculators were faster.
What we lost wasn't the ability to multiply. It was the intuition for when numbers smell wrong.
A person who does mental math develops a feel for magnitudes. When a spreadsheet says revenue grew 847% and you don't flinch — that's the immune system we killed.
6/ MEMORIZATION
We abandoned memorizing poetry, speeches, and case law as "rote learning."
But memorizing a text isn't storing words. It's reconstructing someone else's reasoning inside your own neural architecture.
A lawyer who memorized case law didn't just recall faster. The logic of precedent was wired into how they thought.
Search gave us access to everything and deep familiarity with nothing.
7/ LETTER WRITING
Before texting, people wrote long letters — to friends, family, even to themselves in journals.
Writing "I'm furious at Mark because..." forces you to choose which details matter, notice gaps in your story, and hear how you sound to someone else.
A text message — "ugh Mark is the worst" — skips all of that processing.
The letter was therapy. The journal was self-examination. We replaced both with venting.
8/ ORAL DEBATE
From Athenian assemblies to parliamentary debate societies, humans practiced building arguments in real time, responding to counterarguments, holding a thread across long exchanges.
Twitter replaced construction with reaction.
You don't build an argument anymore. You emit a position.
Reacting feels like thinking. It isn't.
9/ NAVIGATING WITHOUT GPS
When you read a map, you built a mental model of where you were in relation to everything else. You developed judgment about distance and time through experience.
GPS gives you turn-by-turn instructions. You arrive having learned nothing about the territory.
Studies confirm: GPS users show less hippocampal activity and worse spatial memory.
The navigation WAS the spatial thinking.
10/ APPRENTICESHIP
Before credentials and certifications, you learned complex skills by watching a master for years. A carpenter didn't check a chart to know if wood was properly seasoned. They could feel it, smell it, hear it.
We kept the explicit knowledge (checklists, procedures) and discarded the tacit knowledge (embodied intuition).
We often discarded the more valuable half.
11/ COOKING WITHOUT RECIPES
Before apps and meal kits with pre-measured ingredients, cooking required holding a mental model of the whole dish — how flavors interact, how timing sequences interleave.
A meal kit that sends you exactly 15g of pre-sliced ginger eliminates the thinking.
You execute without understanding. And when something goes wrong, you can't adapt — because you never had the model. Only the instructions.
12/ BOREDOM
This might be the biggest one.
Before smartphones filled every idle moment, humans were regularly bored. Waiting rooms. Bus rides. Lying in fields.
Boredom is uncomfortable, so the brain responds by wandering — making unexpected connections, revisiting problems, running simulations.
We didn't eliminate boredom. We eliminated the thinking that boredom produced.
13/The pattern across ALL of these is identical to the handwriting finding:
We identified a practice that seemed inefficient. We replaced it with something faster. We only later noticed that the "inefficiency" was where the cognition lived.
The slow part wasn't a bug. It was the thinking.
14/Here's what's wild.
Modern productivity advice now sells us BACK the friction we removed — but as formal techniques:
— "Premortems" replace the doubts that surfaced naturally in journal writing
— "Decision frameworks" replace the judgment that apprenticeship built
— "Digital detoxes" replace the boredom we used to get for free
15/Every tool that saves you cognitive effort is, to some degree, saving you FROM cognition itself.
The question isn't whether to use the tools.
It's whether you've preserved a practice that does the thinking the tool removed.
16/The Nature editorial drew the line at LLMs writing scientific papers.
But the line is everywhere:
Your GPS is thinking about the city so you don't have to. Your calculator is thinking about quantities so you don't have to. Your meal kit is thinking about dinner so you don't have to. Your phone is thinking during your idle moments so you don't have to.
The convenience was never free. You were paying in cognition. You just couldn't see the bill.
17/One last thought.
The EEG study showed that the hand forming letters activated brain regions that typing didn't.
The hand wasn't recording thought. It was generating it.
Every practice on this list worked the same way. The doing was the thinking.
When we optimized away the doing, we didn't save the thinking.
We lost it.
/end
If this changed how you think about "efficiency," share it with someone who needs the slow version.
Yes. It's called irrational optimism. Delulu is the solulu! – at Singapore
This is worrying. Although I am an avid user of AI, I believe in learning first principles first, before you even get to play with it.
This is not the way to learn.
xitter.cf/_Zeets/status/20510852…
Vibe-coded this art generator using the digits of pi. So easy with @Lovable!
pi-ece-of-art.lovable.app/
Good list by @ryanholiday. In particular, "Beware the Gell-Mann amnesia effect". Especially pertinent in the AI age.
ryanholiday.net/26-rules-to-…
This essentially means that people notice mistakes easily and are highly sceptical when they know a topic well.
However, people are weirdly trusting (of the same source) on topics they don't know well.
Moral of the story: be sceptical regardless of your familiarity with the topic, especially if the source has been proven that it can be wrong.
