9/5/2025 Friday A real life Teacher-Student taboo relationship in public? Only possible on a reality courtroom:
Karen Mills-Francis, an arbitrator or adjudicator rather than a sitting judge (on this reality show), handling case of Serena Young and Howell Brodis. I don't know how real this case is (I'm saving this video just in case it is taken offline) but it's a fun experiment on TA-Student relationship. The conflict of interest is obviously using sex/relationship to manipulate grade, hence the taboo. I don't see any other ways to manipulate one's grade by this means. Of course, on some odd occasion, the relationship is genuine and the disaster would just be bad timing (happened still in the class, meaning they were dating while she was still taking his class). This cause though is not clear how serious they were with each other. Brodis seems more genuine by inviting her to meet his parents and she backed out as if she wasn't looking for anything serious. As far as grading goes, it's also interesting because we are dealing with the question of quality vs. relative subjectivity in the liberal arts. The only part of the video this is slightly hinted, other than by the narrator dissing liberal arts folks over math and science from the obvious sense, is when the Francis asked to see the paper that got D, which I think she was right that the grader was wrong to not leave even a word of comment on the D in the paper. Brodis tried to defend his profession so the judge was ready to rule not wanting to get deeper into how to grade British Literature. Obviously the judge made a good judgement call by calling Young out as a gold (or grade)-digger. Of course, nobody is saying Brodis was 100% clean because at the very least, not judging the sexual advantage part, he showed lack of wisdom when it comes to TA-Student relationship.
9/4/2025 Thursday
Bible Study on 1 Peter 4:7+ at GCC was interesting. Since this is a Bible study, instead of commenting here in this format I will just add to my own Bible Study entry on the same Book. I am done criticizing every single problems the pastor or the others mentioned, as that goal is already achieved, I have known most of them and their culture of understanding better. It is more profitable for me to just merge my criticism of them into a regular Bible Study notes of mine. Though same weight of criticism can still be found, but the focus is not on them. I titled this hospitality in my file as it seems to be the one with most issues, which is off topic by the pastor (focusing on universal instead of distinguishing hospitality for Christians vs. non-Christians, which Gene actually pointed out @32:11 though only as a question unfortunately).
It's interesting that Frank mentioned the parable of the talents here @19:37 as the pastor seems to improve on this, that "there's risk involve, but go do it" kind of notion. However, he's still stuck in "the servant was afraid", and using that as the foundation of that verse. So he is not able to deal with what if it's not fear, or that this fear has evolved into a false sense of justification.
Vocabularies, 成语 from Chinese history 巨鹿之战：
破釜沉舟 - A decision that cut off all means of retreat. Point of no return.
作壁上观 - Watching from the fence
以一当十 - One as Ten
巨鹿之战: 秦朝，赵国 好闲宋义 被 项羽杀之以为项梁死于秦国报复。其他国作壁上观，只好破釜沉舟 前攻巨鹿秦军 以一当十 胜战后，项羽活埋秦国章邯 200，000 军 以防后患。以后项羽将败于刘邦手下自杀：
I think after about 7 years, I've heard cicada sings again for the first time from the backyard.
Just did a demo with folks (Natalie) from Wordly.ai. This interested me when someone from church mentioned about bringing a fiend who only understands Spanish to church. Wordly is the only two AI app that is capable of live nonstop continuous translation. But $1,500/yr is steep cost. That's close to $30 per session (1 hour) per week. And I don't need to translate to 10 people which is the minimum users requirement to have the service. The other app being Microsoft Translator which is free, but I don't have enough experience to compare Wordly vs. Microsoft as far as accuracy goes.
9/1/2025 Monday
Welcome to the United States - A Guide for New Immigrants, is the brochure that even in the Trump era, given to apparently all Green Card recipients upon the receipt of their GC. For both new and renewal. I've scanned mine digitally stored in my Backup Drive. I think after hearing Ring Wing folks like Charlie Kirk, you will get more proponents from the left wing than right wing on this kind of things. This guide is also online. Offering also a path to citizenship. The rights and responsibilities listed are of my interest to note:
Rights:
- Work in the US
- Own property in the US
- Attend public school
- Apply driver's license
- Apply to join certain branches of the U.S. armed forces
- Receive Social Security and Medicare benefits, if eligible.
Responsibilities:
- File taxes with IRS (report worldwide income and report foreign bank and financial accounts)
- Register with the Selective Service (for age 18-26, male)
- Inform USCIS of new address no later than 10 days after move. With USPS for mail forward.
- Maintain permanent residence status: If outside domestic trip is more than a year, must apply for re-entry permit using Form I-131 before leaving, with the intent to NOT reside abroad temporarily. Any trip outside the U.S. may affect your eligibility for citizenship.
This year has not much harvest from the backyard since I did not tend to it due to flight home to Malaysia in the Spring (April-May). Just 3 big pears from my first Asian pear plant and a few figs. Some grapes are still green and small:
Reminiscent Saint Saens' Symphony No. 3 Organ Symphony. I've been looking for the piano version of the movie Babe adaptation of the music, these are the best I could find:
An obvious example of a Christian Nationalist: Charlie Kirk has problem with Zohran Mamdani eating rice with his hand: not hygiene, not Western (which is the best value in everything in the world, according to Kirk), so the TYT took a jab at this:
8/31/2025 Sunday
Sometime around this week, I had a dream that Tom from church hugged Nadia the way I saw some big jockey look guy hugged Vanessa back in OBU days, the playful footballer type of hug, lifting someone up with a tight hug. And Nadia told him off and he seemed embarrassed by it. I am recalling this days later so my memory is a bit vague. I should have written this down sooner. For some reason, I still was more in a cultural shock moment seeing this and not thinking defensively. Do I stop awing and start to show more empathy? "Hey, stop", "are you okay?"