gerrymandering | from a law-ish perspective

I have a law class this semester and we covered United State’s voting rule today. Gerrymandering caught my attention. Here’s a nice introductory video about it: And if you’re interested in some technical stuff, there seem to be a lot of ‘redistricting’ literature in Algorithmic Game Theory and Econ-CS relevant to this topic. Here’s one as an entry into the citation tree: Nikhil Garg, Wes Gurnee, David Rothschild, and David Shmoys....

November 12, 2024

Lucas Debargue | the Encore No.2 at Shanghai Oriental Art Center

This is the pianist’s own composition and presented as the 2nd encore gift for the Shanghai audience. What an honor and pleasure to hear the original interpretation of an unreleased piece. See the artist’s homepage here.

November 12, 2024

Rachmaninov featured in Enio Morricone's movie score, The Legend of 1900

Keyword: Rachmaninov Symphony No.2 Adagio -> Morricone Before the End. The Legend of 1900 (1998) is an Italian English-language film directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, starring Tim Roth. It’s the story of an orphan music prodigy on a ocean liner who grows up to be a pianist but lived forever on the ship. But the music got more famous than the film itself—composed by Ennio Morricone, it has won the Golden Globe Ward for Best Original Score (2000)....

November 11, 2024

Git Ignore | Exclude a 'Results' Folder from Git Sync and Manage It Manually

When working on projects across multiple computers, while syncing using a remote repository managed by git. you might encounter scenarios where you need to run the same code but keep certain directories, like a results folder, unique to each machine: Machine-Specific Data: The results folder may contain data that’s only relevant to a particular machine. Large Files: Syncing large result files can slow down your version control system. Privacy and Security: Results might contain sensitive information that shouldn’t be shared....

November 10, 2024

22🎂

Happy birthday to me — at the age of 22! I like the way Talor Swift decribe this age in her song “22”, saying We’re happy, free, confused and lonely at the same time. I wonder how your life looks like when you’re at this age — would email or text me a picture or a story, and I’ll text back! You can find me at ariana_tang at outlook dot com, or WeChat arianaaa_tang....

November 9, 2024

Grammys 2025 nominations

The GRAMMY nominations for 2025 are out! See the full list here and Billboard’s summary here. Presented by the Recording Academy since 1959, the GRAMMYs are a celebration of excellence, the music community’s highest honor, and its only peer-based award. — The Recording Academy The awards feel freshly minted, covering recordings, compositions, and artists from just September 2023 to August 2024 (well, technically, including remasters—that’s why Beatle’s Now and Then is also nominated for “Record of the year”)....

November 8, 2024

Prologue of a survey and critique on the course 'Computer Applications for Financial Management'

Here’s a prologue on some comments on the course ‘‘Computer Applications for Financial Management". The course design has won multiple awards, and is made to be an obligatory course for all students in Shanghai University of Finance and Economics—for 2 credits, but 64 hours of course loads for one semester. Basically what it does is teaching one how to do Excel to do some higher-level data analysis. It’s a shallow touch into various data analysis perspectives: database tools, a bit of light coding and some basic visualizations....

November 7, 2024

Donald Trump returns to office

New York Times got the story: https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/11/06/us/trump-election-harris-news?smid=url-share Election Live Updates: Trump Fights His Way Back Into Power Americans awoke Wednesday to the news that Donald J. Trump had once again won the White House, a remarkable political comeback that buoyed investors and drew congratulations from around the globe. His victory was confirmed just after 5:30 a.m. Eastern when he captured the battleground state of Wisconsin, putting him above the threshold of 270 electoral votes....

November 6, 2024

The encore piece on Nov. 5 2024 | Martha Argerich at Shanghai Oriental Concert Hall

Final of the Carnival of the Animals, by Saint-Saëns. See an earlier introduction and recommendation of recordings here.

November 5, 2024

Bernstein's recording of Carnival of the Animals

Leonard Bernstein has several recordings of Carnival of the Animals composed by Camille Saint-Saëns. The 1967 recording is notably cool because it features the Bernstein’s charming commentaries. You can for sure read all about the piece via Wikipedia but it’s more fun to listen to the master speak: Your browser does not support the audio element. My dear young friends, music has lots of different uses in life. There are pieces that lift your spirit or interest your mind, or fill you with religious or passionate or dreamy or triumphant feelings....

November 4, 2024