Everything, I mean everything!

Everything is changing rapidly. 

Nobody in the world yet knows about this, but Xi is losing his centralized power at a shocking pace. For a few months now, many incidents have indicated that Xi is drastically losing his grip on the military. Losing control of the military could trigger anything, anything possible - political reforms pushed by rivalry, a sudden change of regime, even. China might enter an unpredictable and unstable phase very soon. Hopefully, we will all be able to successfully obtain our visas and pay China a visit in the summer, bringing our blessings to the land of the deprived and, ya, and...  

When you are from an authoritarian dictatorship, you get the most reliable news source from rumors, and you trust them because they have mostly been proven valid for the past 70+ years! Who would forget the "rumor" of Putin's out-loud crying in his office? We Chinese laughed at that for days and made hundreds of memes. Raj would tell everyone his magical COVID story: As early as January 2020, I stocked up N95 masks and didn't allow him to take any public transportation, which meant he drove to the San Francisco office every day but didn't take Bart or Uber. I demanded he wear N95 throughout the flight back to San Francisco from India and quarantined him for days in his room. People in America woke up to COVID only in April 2020, but we've been isolating ourselves for months already. I did try to warn everybody here, in a state of complete distress, called CDC even, but nobody gave a damn. Y'all believed in WHO? We called Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus "Tan Secretary" (of some CCP department). 

When the authorities snatch away people's freedom of any sort, we use whatever is available in front of us, obviously, social media, the biggest game. Funny, Leena is so against social media; I get that, ya ya, algorithms, echo chambers, and delusionary bubbles. But for a deprived Chinese who has been deep into the web for decades, the algorithm is only for kids, seniors, and the naive. I get whatever I come to get, in my own way, inside and outside censorship. 

One of the main reasons that I stopped giving a fuck about the potential persecution Chinese authorities might inflict on me is their economic performance since COVID. From the central government to the local level, fiscal deficit has become the most urgent problem. Yes, they installed millions of surveillance cameras, but running them needs electricity and human eyes. They are right now in a burning house with America's tariff war because export surplus against America has been the primary source of income for the past 40+ years. They can hardly suppress the constant revolts and protests from the unemployed and hungry; their hands won't be able to reach so long as to touch people like me, they wish! 

Spent hours that day with prof exploring different AI tools. Xi, Trump, and Putin, they are genuinely only small games; the real change that would sweep the entire human race off the ground is coming on us, fast and hard -- AI. At least half of the existing jobs will be replaced within foreseeable years. How much social unrest that's gonna cause? Nobody has a reasonable imagination for that yet. More dictators and strongmen will arise and take advantage of the collective turmoils of humans. Well, if I had time, I could come up with a sci-fi just for that. But it's too late now, before I could even finish the writing, reality will already be here. 

Gemini, well, I don't have respect for tools that practice self-censorship, and to that, a heck heavy load of self-censorship! Gemini is like an intimidated little dwarf who shrunk in the corner, scared of offending any names you bring up, and chooses not to side with any organization, even afraid to side with humanity! ChatGPT is wordy but tries to be humanly logical, always breaking it down into minor points; most of the time, it's helpful since you can cherry-pick; sometimes, it's annoying. Grok is wild, no censorship whatsoever; hope it stays this way, but based on our relations with Tesla, things could drastically change in the future. I would never touch Deepseek and whatever Chinese products in the future, just an old habit. 

To what good karma I now possess a free-of-charge personal novel writing assistant who knows billions of Google times more than me? Sometimes, I throw a half-written thought in there; it gives me exactly what I want to complete! To which I reply, "Oh wow, nice thought! I was going to fathom in that direction!" But no, I won't cheat. I can't, to be realistic. Whatever I'm imagining hasn't existed in anybody's writing yet. I don't want to test the smartass AIs if they could spark conversations with me regarding my imaginary worlds. Nope, I don't want to contribute to creating a generative AI that has a conscience. 

I might use it a little when writing novels, but in my diary, no, no, no. I will keep it very, very humane, with human expressions and mistakes. AI has to stay out of my territory, entirely. That's my last stand of stubbornness, in a changing of time...