Lately
The weather turned hot almost overnight. May was already pushing 30°C, and now June has gone straight into plum rain season. Over the weekend I basically forced myself to spend a day outside, wandering along Suzhou Creek. If I had stayed home, I could easily have done absolutely nothing all day. Someone told me I ask too much of myself, and that there’s nothing wrong with doing nothing once in a while. The Shanghai International Film Festival is about to start too—I saw posters for it on the street—but with my schedule, I won’t be able to catch a single screening. Sigh.
Things on my mind
Vitamin D
I’ve been feeling persistently down lately. It doesn’t seem to be simple work fatigue, but there also isn’t anything specific happening in life that would explain it. I asked GPT about it and got an answer suggesting it might be something like “meaning depletion” after long-term high cognitive load, which honestly sounded complicated enough that I stopped understanding halfway through.
It did suggest something practical, though: get some basic bloodwork done. So I did. I checked a complete blood count, ferritin, vitamin levels, fasting glucose, and female hormones. The one obvious problem was vitamin D—it was absurdly low. I was prescribed 1000 IU, one tablet a day.
What worried me most was the possibility that this was the beginning of the kind of mild depression I went through a few years ago. After looking into it, low vitamin D really does seem to be associated with lethargy and feeling sleepy all the time. Hopefully taking it for a while will help.
Anxiety about investing
At the end of May, a policy-related statement suddenly came out calling for tighter regulation of overseas investment by mainland residents, and for a moment everyone was rattled. It really fits that old pattern: the moment ordinary people find something they can make money from too, the barrier goes up.
I checked my old IBKR account and realized it was only a limited second-tier broker setup anyway, not the fully functional kind—and those aren’t even possible to open now. Add to that the 20% overseas CRS tax burden, and it starts to feel less worthwhile than simply buying QDII funds domestically.
Apparently a lot of people came to the same conclusion. Within a week, the off-exchange S&P 500 and Nasdaq products were being capped down to 10 yuan subscriptions, and on-exchange premiums were already above 10%. Fine, I guess ordinary people are only meant to sink with A-shares.
P.S. With the central bank buying gold and a certain person visiting North Korea, people online have naturally started spinning conspiracy theories again.
Games
Death Stranding: Director’s Cut
I finally finished it—after several years.
The whole process of delivering packages was just too rough. I really value my time, so I have very little patience for gameplay that is purely about spending long stretches on the road. As for the story, there’s not much to add beyond saying that it was genuinely powerful.
That said, I spent the entire game assuming Emily was his wife. Seriously. How did I manage to misunderstand that so completely?
Ace Attorney 3
I finally reached the end of the Phoenix Wright trilogy.
A lot of the cases in this one left me with a weird sense of irritation. In the first case, Phoenix is just unbearably stupid. In the second, the male thief gave me a strange Wang Baoqiang-like vibe—not in appearance, just in feeling. The old man and the cross-dressing character in the third case were also deeply annoying. The fourth case involves pedophilic elements, so... fine. And by the final case, the logic was such a mess that I had no energy left.
Stuff I bought
MaiCong G75 and Logitech K750M
Filco went under not long ago, and Cherry somehow feels like it may not be far behind. I pulled out my old Minila, which used to be top-tier more than ten years ago, and after trying it again I had to admit the typing feel really wasn’t doing it for me anymore. So I decided it was time for a new keyboard.
After a lot of comparison, I bought an EVO80. Three days later, the more I looked at it, the less I liked it. One issue was the weight. Another was that it didn’t really have any major strengths. And on that extra key cluster above the arrow keys, Del was the only key I would ever actually use. That narrowed things down even further, and I ended up focusing on the 75% layout.
What I truly do not understand is why mass-produced mechanical keyboards today are so obsessed with knobs—especially non-removable ones. Aesthetically, I just find them ugly. What I still like is that minimalist, retro, early-2000s sort of design. If you want that now, you basically have to go custom and pay custom prices. It’s not that I couldn’t do that. I just don’t think I need to. Apparently I’m still not consumerist enough.
So I replaced the keyboard at home, and since the office is where I actually do more typing, that setup had to be updated too. I picked up a Logitech K750M as well—also a 75% layout, which saves desk space nicely.
There are far too many switch options now, to the point that I can’t really tell one from another on paper. My approach is simple: buy one, try it, and keep it if the feel is right. So when I was choosing, appearance became the main filter. No knobs. No little screens. No aluminum cases. Once those conditions were set, there really weren’t many options left.
