Alexander X. Chen

As you read my papers, please remember that anything that you didn’t like was requested by reviewers and everything that you did like was my idea

"A man from Chu who sold shields and spears boasted, 'My shield is so strong that nothing can pierce it. My spear is so sharp that there is no object it cannot pierce.' Someone asked him, 'Would you like to be in Forbes?'" - Han Feizi (c. 240 BC)

Someone just walked out of a bathroom stall and did the sign of the cross, so at least my day is going better than his.

My latest pet peeve is when food reviewers use a 5 or 10 pt rating scale and then give ratings like 7.3 or 8.7. FIRST OF ALL there's no way your taste buds have that sort of resolution. SECOND you chose your own grading scale! Why didn't you just choose /100?!??!?

In China, many retirement homes don’t lock their doors so people can check on their older folks easily. In America, this would be considered a market inefficiency and 1 million Gary V wannabes would make TikTok reels on how to most efficiently capitalize.

I’m at a temple in China and it’s cold enough that the monks are wearing beanies. I knew Buddhism and Hinduism have similar roots but I was still surprised to see a picture of a cow on one beanie. I’m also sure 23 is a very pious number.

Something I didn’t know existed until very recently is that (bear with me) marketers market to other marketers and then marketers online talk about how good the marketing directed at marketers is, and how marketers can learn from it to market to regular people that have no idea what’s going on.

>be me >move into new apartment a few months ago >no more soap in bathroom >uproot entire place looking for soap >“I could’ve sworn I bought soap already…” >give up, buy more soap >think of new place to put soap so next time I won’t forget >find brand new Costco pack of soap

If gambling is bad for you why is it so fun???

Soft power is when Taylor Swift is playing on the Daiso radio in Hokkaido

Don’t stress about your college major too much

"Do you like the Microsoft Teams app?" Does Sisyphus like his boulder

Why is it that I need to update my gmail app once every 5 years but my Chipotle app requires an update every month?

Yeah man idk I think the earth is cooked

After every dinner social event and before bed there’s this fun game I like to play in my head called Did I Say Something Stupid

Evergreen

This is a great time for someone (me) who has enough disposable income for the Switch2 (when it inevitably is sold out for retail for 12 months and only obtainable at 2x the price from a reseller) but not enough to buy a house

Me: I will no longer let the weight of my regrets burden me in 2025 Also me with the albatross around my neck:

In April, I started collecting the stickers from fruit I ate in a spare notebook I had sitting around. Here’s to a more fruitful 2025!

2400 SAT kids confidently walking into the gaokao and looking at the first math question

Lot of discourse about American education standards right now. All I know is that it would be the funniest thing ever if we implemented the gaokao here in the US and I would give anything to make that happen.