January 1, 2026　　# New Year Greeting

January 7 2026　　# Gemini for Google Nest

I have had a Google Nest for quite a few years, but due to its poor language capability, as soon as the initial novelty faded, its usage quickly dropped to only one type of regular inquiries: daily weather. Recently, however, my interest was rekindled by the rolling out of Gemini, and I managed to have my Nest acquire a Gemini "core". The result, unfortunately, was mixed: its language capability indeed leaped, and I'm satisfied with that. But there is a ridiculous limitation: to any question, it cuts the conversation right after the answer, which means no follow-up questions, no clarifications, no corrections, et cetera. Would anyone tolerate an assistant that behaves like that? It is almost sabotage to the quasi-human impression people have tried so hard for AI products to achieve. AI might be in a growing phase, but the human intelligence of the Google gentlemen who rolled out such a crippled service seems not. [Notes (added on 2026-04-27): I'm glad to mention that the Gemini "core" finally acquired the capability of doing continued conversation.]

January 11 2026 # Movies: The Hobbit, et al.

Watched the replay of the 2014 movie The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. I liked it, as well as the The Lord of the Rings trilogy which I watched many years ago and to which it was a prequel, far more than the Avatar movies which I also watched over a period of many years. The Avatar movies, with all the fanciness of 3D, 4DX, RPX, etc., might be technologically more advanced, but they carried a far less grand and epic atmosphere, and were quite unconvincing, if not ridiculous, in terms of battles in which a flock of flesh-and-blood beings had beaten an intruding army that was capable of interstellar travel.

January 16 2026 # Movie: All You Need Is Kill

Watched the Japanese Anime movie All You Need Is Kill. The fundamental feature of the movie is a time loop very similar to that in the Tom Cruise movie Edge of Tomorrow which I watched not long ago on Netflix. It is perhaps the closest science fiction can offer as a "hell", since the pain of death repeats itself on a daily basis with beating the almost unbeatable fate being the only escape (the heroes and heroines in both movies narrowly achieved that as one can imagine for movies ‒ but perhaps only for movies). One other thing worth mentioning was that when I exited the theater, I found myself surrounded by a large group of police officers and cameramen, all facing the exit (through which, at least for one second, I was the only person who walked out). I Googled and found there was a "Special Screening of The Wrecking Crew" at the very theater (Regal Times Square) that I happened to have chosen to watch today's movie. :-) [Notes: This posts became relatively hot (with 1k+ views), with multiple comments pointed out that both All You Need Is Kill and Edge of Tomorrow were based on the Japanese light novel All You Need Is Kill. :-)]

January 18 2026 # Movie: Greenland 2: Migration

Watched the movie Greenland 2: Migration. It is in one of my favorite categories: post-apocalyptic sci-fi. The plot and visual effects are both fine, and it is a generally good movie with several scenes by which I felt touched. Oddly, I was even a little bit consoled to see that even in a post-apocalyptic world far worse than the clearly-declining-but-still-much-better world we are currently in, people still have hope. I know it's terrible to even compare today's world with a post-apocalyptic one, but such a thought somehow arose and I therefore record it here.

January 22 2026 # On Amazon Delays

I noticed through a series of unpleasant experiences that delays became more frequent with Amazon, and in a way almost obeyed Murphy's law so that what I needed most or most urgently had the greatest chance to be delayed. A few days ago, I ordered a large bag of Ice Melt, and it was scheduled to arrive yesterday. Yesterday morning, I heard the news of the snowstorm over the coming weekend and felt lucky that I ordered Ice Melt almost presciently. But sure enough, Amazon didn't want to back up my good feeling, and smashed it with a "Your package is delayed" email right on time. The new delivery time reflected a pushback of 6 days, enough to miss the usage for the coming snowstorm! What makes the delay very unnatural is that it was not caused by a shortage of merchandise since it's already shipped, nor was it caused by weather since the scheduled delivery date is way before the snowstorm. Yet it was delayed and delayed long enough to miss a crucial window of usage. [Notes: To my surprise, this post brought in a reply from an Amazon Help personnel on X, which, though can't solve the delay issue, was a positive guesture and I appreciated.]

January 23 2026 # Movie: Mercy

Watched the movie Mercy. This movie, which I don't know whether it's the first of its kind, pictured a future that I myself had also imagined before, in which AI substituted humans in the justice system. The recent trend of the U.S. Supreme Court falling more and more into religious and partisan lines only strengthens the merit of such substitution, though it is certainly very unlikely in terms of when this would happen (if at all, since what makes the human justice system so corruptible is exactly why humans will try to keep it for as long as possible) which this movie pictured as occurring within the current decade. Another thing that is very unlikely is that the defendant only has 90 minutes to prove his/her innocence, a time limit only suitable for making a movie. But other than that, the movie is generally sensible and enjoyable. The way the defendant and the AI judge comb through evidence in the cloud is particularly fascinating, and the uncovered fact that the AI judge was misled by a human police officer in a previous case is a nice twist at the very end.

January 28 2026 # Simple Joy

One thing I particularly enjoyed is reading a book while sipping a cup of coffee or tea in a quiet shop, ideally near a large window so the external world that is often in interesting contrast to the internal one the book projects into my mind can be conveniently in view. I can enjoy this for as long as the coffee or tea lasts, and I can do this in complete solitude. Einstein once said solitude was painful in his youth, "but delicious in the years of maturity". To me, a certain level of solitude is not only delicious, but also frees me from a dependency on other people in the pursuit of joy. I feel lucky that so simple and trivial a thing can be so enjoyable to me, for if not, the bar for happiness will be higher, and life will be less fun.

February 6 2026 # Vagueness of a Memoir

Recently I came across a Collector's Edition of the Entertainment Weekly magazine entitled The Ultimate Guide to Star Trek. It is basically a reprint of the same issue that was also published 5 and 10 years ago, celebrating the 60, 55 and 50 years of Star Trek respectively. I read a few pages related to my favorite series, The Next Generation, and saw Patrick Stewart (the actor of Captain Picard) said that he got a call from Robert Justman (the associate producer of Star Trek) saying "You're a hit... More people saw you act last night than have seen you in total in your entire career." It is interesting to point out that in Stewart's memoir Making It So, which was published in 2023, the same Justman was recorded as saying "Do you realize that tonight, more people will see your work than the total number of people who have watched you act in your entire career?" Not only the wording, but the tenses are different: one is about a fact (past tense), while the other is a mere prediction (future tense). Such is the typical vagueness of a memoir. :-)

February 9 2026 # Movie: Dracula

Watched the movie Dracula. Movies of this type, though not always accurate, are my fast-track way to get to know classic novels that I never had the time and patience to read and yet would better know to a certain extent to sugar-coat myself into a person who is culturally more diverse than I really am. It is a nice movie and I generally enjoyed it. Contrary to the impression that it is a horror story though, what impressed me most turned out to be the romantic part, and I have to resent the ending, in which Dracula swallowed the worldview a Christian priest poured on him and gave up ‒ in fact, betrayed ‒ the love of Mina. But rotten as such a worldview seemed to me, it was of course very much mainstream during the time the story was conceived.

February 18 2026 # Movies: Casablanca and Roman Holiday

Watched two classics over the past weekend: Casablanca, a 1942 movie, and Roman Holiday, a 1953 movie. Both are great and lived up to their reputation which, as far as personal taste is concerned, is not a guarantee of my fondness, but turned out to be 100% the case for these two. I particularly enjoyed Roman Holiday ‒ in fact, I enjoyed it so much that I went to Barnes & Noble the next day and bought a DVD of it (for a mere $5, which is a steal 😄).

February 20 2026 # Movie: Crime 101

"Crime 101" sounds like a tutorial on crime, but it is actually the title of a movie about elusive and competent criminals that I watched yesterday (the "101" in the title comes from the escape path of the criminals which was U.S. Route 101). Interweaving two criminals, one undervalued insurance broker in a greedy insurance company, one marginalized detective in a corrupt police department, and some romance altogether, even with character development, it seemed to be a story complex enough for a series, and yet it was covered surprisingly well in a 140-minutes movie, and that was quite impressive.

February 26 2026 # Asimov on Science Fiction Writing

March 3 2026 # Cold Spring Harbor

Cold Spring Harbor, in a very literal view:

March 6 2026 # Book: Why We Die

March 9 2026 # Movie: The Bride!

Watched the movie The Bride!. If there is something, similar to Star Wars Expanded Universe and Star Trek Expanded Universe, that could be called Frankenstein Expanded Universe, this film is certainly a candidate for it, and a good one. I particularly liked one little detail: Frank (aka Frankenstein) asked Dr. Euphronious to create a companion for him, and while the latter hesitated due to numerous factors that could go wrong, Frank's "I thought you were a mad scientist", which would be an insult to an ordinary scientist, ignited the pride of Dr. Euphronious, and then it was so. :-)

March 13 2026 # Movie: Train Dreams

Watched Train Dreams yesterday, a movie which I thought few people would come to watch (the amount of advertisements the theater placed before the movie was consistent with that thought, since when I entered a mere 10 minutes later than the scheduled time, the movie was already started, a phenomenon that has never happened for any movies with even marginal popularity nowadays), but it surprised me with about two dozen in the audience. It's a sad movie, with a melancholic and deeply touching sense of the passage of time.

March 18 2026 # Movie: Frankenstein

Watched Frankenstein, yet another movie this year that was based on a classic novel and served me well in the purpose of gaining quick knowledge about the novel (though, as is always the case for a novel I've never read, can't be sure about the faithfulness of the plot). It's a nice movie and I enjoyed watching it. But I do have one question regarding the plot: How could Frankenstein learn to read from a blind man? (Yes, I know it's not theoretically impossible, but practically...)

March 29 2026 # Movie: Oppenheimer

Watched the movie Oppenheimer. This is a 2023 movie which I didn't watch when it first came out, since, although history of science is a major area of interest of mine, I can, exactly because of that, bear less the stereotyping and exaggeration of scientists that are almost inevitable in movies. This said, when it is reshown in Regal Cinemas with which I now have a membership that costs me only 50¢ to watch, I finally watched it. It's an OK movie, though not exempt from the shortcomings I expected for movies about scientists, but to a lesser degree, perhaps because it is the "non-scientist" part of Oppenheimer that was the focus of the movie (for that matter, actually most biographies as well).

April 3 2026 # Bookstore Finance

April 9 2026 # On Plastic Bag Ban

Plastic bags have been banned in New York State for quite a few years, and I have often felt that this is an idea not ideally implemented. Ever since the ban, I began to buy plastic bags, the very type that used to come from supermarkets, for my (indoor) garbage cans, and I used about the same number of bags, thus having about the same environmental footprint. Though not everyone uses garbage cans that can reuse supermarket plastic bags, it probably won't be too difficult to lure most people, perhaps through certain financial incentives or a brand new design that better unifies the sizes of garbage cans and supermarket plastic bags, into a habit of reusing supermarket plastic bags thus negating the necessity of a plastic bag ban for supermarkets. As long as garbage bags are still plastic, which seems to me to be quite obviously true, this in my opinion is better than a plastic bag ban, and it will be helpful even in states where a plastic bag ban is considered too extreme.

April 25 2026 # Movie: Michael

Watched the movie Michael. As someone who has never watched any Michael Jackson concert, or any concert at all for that matter, this movie, with its impressive visual and audio effects, might be the closest to the experience I have missed. I was always amazed by movies of such category, in which an actor or actress needs to be found that not only resembles a superstar (singer, dancer, boxer, etc) in appearance, but is also able to imitate his or her professional actions to a sufficiently high degree.

April 27 2026 # Movie: Whisper of the Heart

Watched the 1995 Ghibli movie Whisper of the Heart. It turned out to be a movie I had watched before at home, and when a few scenes of definitive memory confirmed that, I was surprised by how little I remembered of the storyline, especially considering how much I enjoyed it this time. With all the theater effects and the focus that my home environment can't match, I hope I will not forget it again. :-)