Today is the Qingming Festival (Tomb-Sweeping Day)—it’s a celebration of spring and memory. During Qingming, families visit the tombs of their ancestors to clean the gravesites and make ritual offerings to their ancestors. Or just go out for a spring hiking in nature. At the Orchid Pavilion at Shaoxing City I’m not a big fan of classical Chinese literature—I know it’s deep and awesome but please that’s just not my thing. But gladly if you went through high school in China and passed the college school entrance examination with the 10 million students every year, you are able to recite well the Orchid Pavilion Preface (and a few other very famous classical Chinese literature pieces). ...

18 Ariana Grande studio acappellas—it’s like listening to the angel sing for 90 minutes straight!!! Buy it. But it. Link to official website for the album. Ariana Grande recently released an official a cappella version (e.g. vocals only, no instrumentals) of her whole eternal sunshine deluxe album. Ariana is known for her vocal stacking—on her previous album, Sweetener, the track “get well soon” famously maxed out Pro Tools’ limit of 256 vocal layers. Her producer was like, “Sorry, we can’t add another harmony—you broke the software.” Her new a cappella album is available digitally on her website for just $9.99, which honestly is a pretty reasonable price for such a meticulously crafted vocal showcase. Highly recommended for music geeks. ...

When an AI server says “I’m here to help!"—they aren’t here to help you—it’s there to tire you out until you accept your fate or log off in frustration. Companies today, in their never-ending quest to cut costs, have increasingly turned to AI-powered solutions for customer service—so they (i) hire fewer human agents, and (ii) make it frustratingly difficult for you to reach an actual person. Back in the old days, AI customer service was nothing more than keyword-triggered auto-responses and simplistic, rule-based bots. Today, however, these systems—powered by sophisticated large language models—have become annoyingly competent at handling basic inquiries. So now, companies aren’t just deploying AI to streamline services; they’re intentionally adding friction to prevent customers from easily reaching human agents. ...

Something fun for April 1st: Goofy (and economically spicy) IP bleaches—aka, copycats! Miu Miu vs. Zara Miu Miu is high fashion. Zara is high speed. One sells couture dreams; the other sells dreams on clearance. For trendy (and budget-aware) fashion girls, Zara is a cheat code—you can literally recreate an entire Miu Miu look for about 5% of the price. TikTok is full of tutorials showing how to turn YSL, Miu Miu, or Prada show into a Zara haul. ...

Today at Columbia Business School’s DRO PhD open house, a friend of mine from SJTU is really into something called “experimentation”—and introduced it to me. I found is somewhat echos online learning. But not entirely the same. Experimentation in OR/OM means actively exploring different actions to learn about unknown factors, rather than passively using assumed parameters to optimize a system. This concept is central to online learning problems like multi-armed bandits and reinforcement learning. Algorithms balance exploration vs. exploitation to maximize cumulative reward. ...

Last summer, my then-boyfriend—not an economist but, as it turned out, a very rational kind of asshole—drove me to the airport to San Francisco. As I trying to connect up Apple Music in the car, I frustratingly struggled with his ancient iPhone 8. He muttered that “the new one is already ordered.” I nodded. Fine. Weeks later, I landed back from Yale, and he was there to pick me up again—with the same cracked iPhone 8. He explained that he had read online that the iPhone 16 would be released soon, with significantly better performance and the same launch price as the current iPhone 15. So, being the rational agent he is, he canceled the order and decided to wait. ...

Ariana Grande’s new album Eternal Sunshine (Deluxe) is released today, with six additional songs. Eternal Sunshine Deluxe Ariana Grande has always been my favorite pop singer. Her new album as usual, is extremely complicatedly layered and emotionally authentic. I bet for at least 8.0 in pitchfork. AG is setting the upperbound of pop music. Because, pop music, just like every other genres of art, are constrained by their definition, structure, and functionality. Yes, artists are trying to push boundaries all the time. But pop is pop—you’ll always see structured blocks, repeating melodies and steady, unchanging beats in all these 3-mins long pop songs. So sorry, popular music’s landscape is too saturated and possibly has peaked over the past 20 years. ...

The Art Institute of Chicago boasts one of the world’s finest collections of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art. If you’re a frequent gallery visitor, one Monet won’t be too much of a surprise. But a walls of Monet’s Wheatstacks would still be impressive… The following is one of my favourite. One of Monet’s 25 Haystacks painting (1888-1891). Btw, really good short introduction for impressionism: The Triumph of Impressionism In the 1870s, a group of young artists, who would be known as the Impressionists, redefined what a painting should be. At the time, ordinary people and places were not considered important subjects, and paintings were supposed to look as if the artist had labored on the work over a long period of time. The Impressionists disagreed with these conventions; both their choices in subject and style defied the strict rules of the official art system. These artists were united by their interest in representing the modern world of their daily experience-particularly the parks, boulevards, and public spaces found in Paris, its suburbs, and the countryside. Their vibrant colors and loose, tactile brushstrokes were meant to show that they worked outdoors rather than confined within the studio. The success of the Impressionists helped give future artists more freedom to choose their own subjects and experiment with new styles. ...

I am at Chicago Booth’s PhD admits visit day. Professor Budish suggested a really useful advice in terms of how to choose where to go to “Go and read (thoroughly) the papers of the professors you want to work with at all places you want to go to. Then you’ll know.” Professor Pernoud gave a hint on being successful PhD student: don’t procrastinate, submit papers asap. Booth’s ‘winter garden’ ...

Do Chinese people really drink that much milk tea? Mar 25 2025: Chinese tea chain Chagee filed for a U.S. initial public offering on Tuesday, seeking to trade on the Nasdaq using the ticker “CHA.” Since its founding in 2017, the company has grown to more than 6,400 teahouses across China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, as of Dec. 31, according to a regulatory filing. Roughly 97% of its locations are in China. ...