Andrew Leonard

The Name of the Game is Self-Cultivation Dreams of Daoist transcendence go through the online looking glass. It's time to level up. Climbing Mount Emei, Part VI

".... Millions of readers are addicted to daily doses of serially produced fiction in which protagonists engage in pseudo-Daoist practices of self-cultivation designed to transform themselves into all-powerful beings." open.substack.com/pub/andrewle...

My Mamdani Martini.

Just heard my favorite New Order song in a Chevy commercial. Really captured the moment.

When Fantasy Becomes Flesh A story about the assassination of a warlord, with an extended cameo from KPop Demon Hunters. Climbing Mount Emei, Part IV.

How could KPop Demon Hunters NOT push its way into a newsletter narrative inspired by magic-wielding Sichuanese female knight errants? I’m just ashamed it’s taken me so long. andrewleonard.substack.com/p/when-fanta...

No Ordinary Woman Princess Pingyang and the brave politics of steppe nomad cross-fertilization. Part III of Climbing Emei Mountain.

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The triumph of Silicon Valley. Purposeful flooding the info sphere with inaccuracy and inappropriateness. One of stupidest goddam things humanity has ever done.

Pro tip: if you eat a potent edible half an hour before dogs go crazy barking at tsunami sirens you are likely to a: be confused and b: at peace with your unavoidable fate

My dad and grandfather bought Tom Lehrer vinyl back in the day and my mom says he was a great teacher of statistics when she was at MIT. At an impressionable age he introduced me to the concept of sarcasm. What a fantastic talent!

Just come over to Berkeley already!

A Poem Turned Into a Sword A Mobius strip of Chinese women warriors, from my living room to the Spring and Autumn Annals and back again. Climbing Emei Mountain, Part II.

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Fabulous

RIGHT!!!???

"In the Darkness, I Pour Wine" The distance between a civilization’s peak and its collapse can be as short as a single love affair gone wrong. Climbing Emei Mountain, Part I

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The Dao is a Gigantic Glass of Beer At a fraught moment, let us honor those who show us the way

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At Home He’s A Tourist

Thank you!

How the Internet became the Book of Changes The conclusion of The Universal Commerce of Light

My series on Leibniz and the Book of Changes took me to some unexpected places, including the Hohenzollerns, Taiwanese semiconductors, the Tower of Babel... but I really did not expect that it would end with my love for my youngest daughter. open.substack.com/pub/andrewle...

A gold wire on this transistor is broken. Re-do it.
¬ After magnifying it 30 times ¬ under the microscope, do the 80 times magnification
No merest blemish
No tiny dent

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Did Leibniz dream of DeepSeek？ In the age of hypography, AI will be king. Part VI of The Universal Commerce of Light

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How Was It Possible? The current that drew me from Gottfried Leibniz to curiosity about the remarkable history of the Hohenzollern dynasty and the rise (and fall) of Prussia, led, thanks to a recommendation from my sister...

How, above all, was it possible that so many … revealed such an astounding lack of discrimination and of plain common sense by giving aid to screeching gang of fraudulent political gamblers? open.substack.com/pub/andrewle...

The Universal Language of Tofu In a post-Babel world of communications chaos, let food do the talking

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Blowing my mind every other paragraph

your feed has been blessed by the MAJAPAHIT MONEY PIG
medieval.ox.ac.uk/2023/11/06/w...

I wanted to know why Frederick "The Great Elector" William started collecting Chinese manuscripts in the 17th century, so I started digging into Donald Lach's dissertation, "Contributions of China to German Civilization, 1648-1740." Now I cannot stop thinking about this portrait of the Elector:

It is light years beyond what it was a year ago. I’m optimistic about growth.

When I quit Twitter the thing I was most unprepared for was how suddenly I was blind to what was happening in Taiwan. No news source could replace the sense of connection generated by the people I followed. But today is a new day. I feel like a missing limb has been restored.

The Universal Commerce of Light In which Gottfried Leibniz consults the Book of Changes and invents digital technology. With cameos from Neal Stephenson, Philip K. Dick, Joseph Needham, and eventually, The Chinese Computer.

As for me, of late I have been distracting myself from news about the present-day world with a dizzying journey into 17th century Chinese-Europe interconnections, featuring Gottfried Leibniz as a main character. andrewleonard.substack.com/p/the-univer...

A little more than 18 months ago I started an account here, but things were moving a little slow and there was absolutely no China/Taiwan-related conversation. Today I logged in for the first time in well over a year and I am stunned to see hundreds of followers. So let's see what's going on!

The San Francisco I believe in.