“So… you like music?” When I told the blind-date woman—God knows which number by now—about the only hobby I can actually bring up, I finally got something slightly more positive than the usual “oh.” “Yeah, a lot.” As I said it, my head was full of the line from an eroge: “はい、大好きです。”

A while back I went to a local Oracle “high-end summit” — yes, that’s in scare quotes. Calling it a high-end summit really just meant an ad for Oracle’s current push into healthcare IT. The engineer doing the talk worked hard, doing his best to explain in plain language to a room of paunchy “decision-makers” who know nothing about databases what “cloud services” are, what “IaaS” is, what “PaaS” is, what “SaaS” is, and so on. He kept insisting the future is cloud, that storing your data in the cloud and buying cloud services would be such a great deal, so much easier than maintaining your own data with your heart in your throat. Didn’t do a damn bit of good.

I’m flat broke lately, so I’ve been eating whatever’s cheap enough to keep me full. Military rations, for instance…

A long time ago I had no idea who Luo Yonghao was, yet plenty of my classmates were obsessed with him. They all thought he was amazing, so I watched his talks about idealism and startup history too, and figured yeah, the guy really is something. At least he isn’t the type who only cares about profit, and that alone is worth a lot. Then he decided to make phones and started boasting online every day. It annoyed me, but I could sort of see what he was up to. He just wanted marketing and eyeballs. He just picked a fairly low-brow way to get them. I wrote about this a long time ago. I was kind of itching to try the Smartisan T1, but I really hate physical buttons, so I never pulled the trigger. This time, with the Nut, I thought it over… figured worst case I could just replace my old Meizu M1 Note, so I went for it.

A long time ago I didn’t like Chinese DAPs. They were ugly and the battery life was bad. Later the battery life at least improved a bit, getting into double digits at least, but they were still ugly. So now we’ve reached the point where Chinese DAPs finally look not-terrible and have passable battery life, but the gap in software experience is still a real wound. This is a fundamental gap. While world-class portable players give you all sorts of comfortable control experiences, our Chinese DAPs are still way behind on the basic function of “searching for songs.” All we can do is pull out “but our sound quality is better” to console ourselves, but the number of audiophiles willing to give up usability is small after all, and long-term self-numbing inside a small circle only leaves you further stuck in place. Fortunately, a manufacturer is finally willing to break through, and that’s FiiO.

Let me start with a true story. It’s kinda long.

I don’t watch porn anymore, but back in high school I watched it every day. Watch enough and you start thinking about it—you even start arguing with other fans about what makes a good one. The standard was always whether it got you going hard enough. Maybe I’m a bit of a deviant, but while everyone else was chasing pretty actresses with huge tits and great bodies, I was hunting for specific scenarios: humiliation, getting gangbanged by a bunch of Black guys, being dumped out in the middle of nowhere for all kinds of play, getting raped in the middle of the street, etc., etc. But over time I gradually realized I was being an idiot. The stuff I liked was way too fake—either there wasn’t enough struggling, or the acting was just completely unconvincing. Honestly it was less convincing than the rape scenes in Chinese TV dramas. Watch too much and it gets old, because it’s still just porn they filmed—if it were realistic enough it’d be a crime. After thinking it over, I figured those older-sister-takes-your-virginity plots were better. At least they aren’t that fake, right… Thinking about how I got into porn always brings up Wu Lao’er.

For a long time—well, no, more like recently—I’ve been mulling over one question: What exactly is it that makes me unable to get a girlfriend, and makes every arranged date blow up in my face? After turning it over and over, there’s only one answer: I’m bad at picking up girls. And with a determination to get to the bottom of things, it’s worth digging further—why am I bad at it, and what the hell do I need to do to get good?

Why did the K314P earbud climb to 1000 yuan? Back when I bought mine, it just sounded like a bright, airy earbud with a bit of a bass deficit. Though to be fair, I never listened that closely… I just figured: At this price, an earbud is only good for making some noise… Turns out the K314P made quite a name for itself with that noise. According to the various audio gurus, the K314P’s treble can match or even exceed the K3003—you know the K3003? The big hybrid flagship! And then it got discontinued… and nothing else reaches that treble height. So the price went up.

Somewhere along the way, I started buying everything online. My mother didn’t get it at first, especially when it came to food. “The supermarket downstairs has it. Why the hell do you have to buy it online?” “It’s cheaper online!” That was usually my answer, and I figured I had solid reasoning behind it. Look — opening a shop on Taobao is basically opening a shop nationwide. You’re up against sellers from all over the country. If you don’t sell cheap, someone cheaper will. Competition that fierce has to drive margins down, right? And for most electronics, online prices really are lower than official ones. So I took it for granted that local brick-and-mortar stores, stuck with worse supply channels than the official ones and Shenzhen’s Huaqiangbei, must be more expensive. And then reality kept slapping me in the face.