Quotes for Asian-American Pacific Islander Heritage Month

This May, each Friday had content related to AAPIHM. I am kind of proud of that.

I don't always manage that level of organization, as the next few weeks are going to show. However, because I want a more equitable and just society, I try and do my part in the ways that I have available.

Songs are going on through June, which affects some other things but seemed fair because I have not done as well for songs. For quotes, I sure have a lot of actors in this one. I don't know that it's bad, but it feels like there could be more of a background.

Also, there are a few whom you may notice are only Asian, not Asian-American. I still have not completely resolved whether that should count. 

Anyway, I tried.

There is one repeat, with Grace Lee Boggs on the 3rd and 31st, but she was a big part of my reading this year, and I liked both quotes. 

The Bruce Lee quote was posted the day we got back from Seattle, where his grave is, as well as Brandon's. We did not visit them, but I did think about them.

Quotes: 

5/1 “America’s democracy is not guaranteed. It is only as strong as our willingness to fight for it. To guard it and never take it for granted. And protecting our democracy takes struggle. It takes sacrifice. But there is joy in it. And there is progress. Because we, the people, have the power to build a better future.” — Kamala Harris

5/2 “That remains part of the problem—that we don't know the unpleasant aspects of American history...and therefore we don't learn the lesson those chapters have to teach us. So we repeat them over and over again.” – George Takei

5/3 “When you read Marx (or Jesus) this way, you come to see that real wealth is not material wealth and real poverty is not just the lack of food, shelter, and clothing. Real poverty is the belief that the purpose of life is acquiring wealth and owning things. Real wealth is not the possession of property but the recognition that our deepest need, as human beings, is to keep developing our natural and acquired powers to relate to other human beings.” – Grace Lee Boggs

5/4 "No one should ever be locked away simply because they share the same race, ethnicity, or religion as a spy or terrorist. If that principle was not learned from the internment of Japanese Americans, then these are very dangerous times for our democracy." -- Fred Korematsu

5/5 “It is the fate of modern life that we repeatedly lose touch with nature, the environment, the planet. But we try to regain it again and again. It's like a circle. In children's hearts and souls when they're born into the world, nature already exists deep inside them. So what I want to do in my work is tap into their souls.” – Hayao Miyazaki

5/6 “I've always felt that if I am deserving of the Medal of Honor, there are many, many others who are. I felt a little bad receiving it, so I received it on behalf of the fellows, because there's no such thing as a single-handed war. There's always a support group, and if you didn't have people who supported you, you couldn't fight a war.” – Daniel Inouye

5/7 "Sometimes the future changes quickly and completely, and we’re left with only the choice of what to do next. We can choose to be afraid of it. Just stand there trembling, not moving. Assuming the worst that can happen. Or we step forward into the unknown, and assume it will be brilliant." -- Sandra Oh

5/8 “We need storytelling. Otherwise life just goes on and on, like the number Pi.” – Ang Lee

5/9 “Life will knock us down, but we can choose whether or not to stand back up.” – Jackie Chan

5/10 "All these people, all these things came into my life, and they’re all blessings from God. And now that I look back, I realize that these are His fingerprints all over my story." -- Jeremy Lin

5/11 “Anger is a gift, but organized anger is a weapon.” – Tammy Duckworth

5/12 “Nobody else can make the sound you make.” – Yo-Yo Ma

5/13 “Success is a collection of problems solved.” --  By I.M. Pei

5/14 "Injuries teach you how to slow down." -- Yao Ming

5/15 "Your story may not have such a happy beginning, but that doesn't make you who you are. It is the rest of your story, who you choose to be." -- Michelle Yeoh

5/16 "I don't know secret to success, but I'm pretty sure the closest thing is preparation." -- Michelle Kwan

5/17 “Man is a genius when he dreams. Dream what you are capable of. The harder you dream it, the sooner it will come true.” – Akira Kurosawa

5/18 "Every day, someone realizes a dream. I believe dreams help light our darkness and give us the push we need to move across the rink of life." -- Kristi Yamaguchi

5/19 “Our society would be better if we all were just given the opportunity to dream, to believe, and to pursue the things that make our heart sing.” — Kelly Marie Tran

5/20 “I always think that my way of doing things, I want to make life a bit easier for the people that come behind me.” -- Naomi Osaka

5/21 "Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else's life forever." -- Margaret Cho

5/22 “Dream big. The sky has room for all stars.” – Constance Wu

5/23 “To me, beauty is inclusion — every size, every color — that’s the world I live in.” — Prabal Gurung

5/24 “Remember, success is a journey not a destination. Have faith in your ability. You will do just fine.” – Bruce Lee

5/25 "There's really no substitute for working hard. I think that's my biggest talent. There are always people who are funnier and more talented than I am, but I don't take anything for granted and I commit myself 100% to each of my roles." -- Ken Jeong

5/26 “You don't want to continue to do one thing and only one thing. You want to keep challenging yourself and if you do well at it, great, if you fall on your face, you tried. Like, she's really terrible at comedy! Who knew? But if you didn't try and put yourself out there you'd never know.” -- Lucy Liu

5/27 “I never was able to do karate. That's calling me a good actor. I act like I can do anything.” – Pat Morita

5/28 “Human life is difficult. But as this life is coming to an end, I consider myself lucky to have lived it.” – James Hong

5/29 “Everything you make is being made by every single experience you’ve ever had in your whole life, and on top of that, things you were born with.” — Maya Lin

5/30 "Remember that consciousness is power. Tomorrow's world is yours to build." -- Yuri Kochiyama

5/31 “Love isn't about what we did yesterday; it's about what we do today and tomorrow and the day after.” – Grace Lee Boggs

On experience

It's hard to ignore some similarities in personality and general demeanor between Platner and Fetterman, but one area in which Fetterman had clear superiority was in political experience.

I find that a little more interesting in that Fetterman's experience was not ideal, but still something. There may be some lessons in examining it.

First of all, Platner's listed experience is as harbormaster, chair of a planning board, and some leading of activist efforts. The primary detail I have seen on any of those is some people calling his harbormaster job nonexistent. 

Harbormaster job descriptions vary a lot, so that could mean it's largely an honorary position, which is not quite the same as nonexistent. That might have been something to pursue earlier in the process, but at this point there are bigger concerns.

On the other hand, Fetterman was the Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor and prior to that served as mayor of Braddock, Pennsylvania for thirteen years.

I notice two things about Fetterman's experience.

The first is that those are more executive than legislative positions. The duties are different, and the ways of working. It's great to have an executive who is good at working with others, but it is more consistently a need in legislative work. 

There are people who excel at both, but it probably requires some adjustment.

The other thing about having a public service record is that it gives people a chance to observe your work.

One of the duties of a lieutenant governor, at least in Pennsylvania, is presiding over the state senate. Fetterman attended only half of the sessions in 2020, and a third of them in 2021. Starting from the inauguration, he left about a third of his work days blank. The days he did work often lasted only 4-5 hours. 

At the same time, he was diligent in visiting counties regarding marijuana legalization (which the governor had assigned him to do) and was passionate and engaged in his work overseeing the Pennsylvania Board of Pardons.

Looking at that only (without considering other personality concerns), I would not think that legislation on a national level would be the best fit for him. Putting him over a department might work great, though the shortened working schedule could have a bad effect on general morale. Putting him over a temporary project that he cared about might be better.

That's just being practical.

Being practical solely on the topic of experience for the Maine election, Mills was easily the most qualified. 

For the other three, there's not much political experience at all, but based on job backgrounds Costello and LaFlamme are both more suited to the Senate than Platner would be.

The people who are pushing Platner aren't really about that. It's image, and personality, and vibes.

It is about that in a very specific way. 

Disclosure

If you have been paying any attention at all, you will know that information keeps coming out about Graham Platner that should be damaging, but various people keep insisting that it should not be held against him.

These are the same people who insist that there is no other choice for Maine Dems, which I don't think is quite true, as was the subject of yesterday's post.

Also interesting to me, though, is information that is coming out about the people pushing Platner.

There are three notable ones that I want to mention.

One is that Annie Wu, who has been pushing Platner, is actually paid by him.

Wu styles herself as a political consultant, so that isn't too surprising. It might not even be disqualifying, except it hadn't been disclosed.

I can't find an article that isn't really snarky, including one that keeps changing Platner's first name (I think it is humor that I don't get, but I don't know), but there does seem to be an admission, kind of:

https://x.com/neeratanden/status/2059812308574953551 

I am using a link where Neera Tanden quotes Wu's tweet, because I kind of don't trust Wu not to delete. 

Anyway, Wu's explanation is that she is paid by too many people to list them all. With the amount of publicity that this particular campaign is getting, it seems like the one that most needs mentioning.

Two related things that amuse me (in a cynical way)...

Wu's reference to "un-bought" progressives while celebrating Piker:

https://x.com/Annie_Wu_22/status/2060804790708240388 

The other is this series of tweets about Mainers being tired of out of state people telling them how to vote. Wu is based in Pennsylvania and Morris Katz seems to be from New York. As veterans of campaigns for Fetterman and Bernie Sanders, those locations make sense. If they are good at what they do, it may even make sense for Platner to hire them, but they are still from out of state.

Speaking of the Fetterman campaign, one of the other fun things was Sarah Longwell's claim that she was a Conor Lamb supporter all along:

https://x.com/SarahLongwell25/status/2060735929652748377 

That was not true. There were old posts that I can't find now (maybe deleted). 

If people are realizing now that pushing Fetterman makes their judgment questionable... they are not showing any lessons learned; just pretending it didn't happen.

Speaking of "real Mainers" leads us to the third thing, Genevieve McDonald, former Maine House member and women's fishing advocate, who worked on Platner's campaign, but then stopped. 

Hey, Morris Katz comes up in this story too!

https://www.aol.com/news/top-graham-platner-adviser-threatened-152058479.html 

When contacted about information that the Wall Street Journal already had, McDonald confirmed. Katz contacted her threatening that if she did not retract, it would be spun as her betraying Platner's wife.

That is how they have spun it, and it is spreading that way. It does not appear to be true, though it does show that this group is skilled at staying on message.

https://x.com/ok_post_guy/status/2061533850636018120 

As it says, McDonald has now gone on record with the New York Times. 

Maybe I am naive to think that truth matters, but is it possible that lying, not vetting candidates thoroughly, and not caring about experience might have some bad results? 

The next senator from Maine...

One thing that I hope was really clear from last week's posts was that honesty matters.

On one level, that is part of a wider set of beliefs where lots of things matter, like knowledge and expertise and how we treat each other. I don't take many things lightly. Yes, that can be a lot of pressure and very frustrating, but trying to wave away the importance of inconvenient things has its own problems, I assure you.

One of my frustrations with leftists is what they consider important and what they don't; honesty is a big part of that. We can see a lot of that focused around the current Senate primary in Maine. This is specifically for Democrats, as Republican sitting senator Susan Collins is currently unopposed. (Two earlier contenders are now showing as withdrawn or disqualified.)

I have not been following the race closely because I will not be voting in it. That doesn't mean it doesn't matter to me; just that it makes more sense to focus on where I have an influence. 

I had to look because of something that surprised me.

Leftists have been focusing all of their strength on supporting Platner, which meant focusing their opposition on Janet Mills, who is now still on the ballot but unofficially withdrawn.

After her withdrawal, it changed to how you have to support Platner because Collins is so evil and there is no other choice.

Then I saw ads for David Costello.

There is also a write-in candidate, Andrea LaFlamme. 

If they felt safe ignoring Costello, I assume that he does not have a lot of recognition. It does not look like he has previous governmental experience, though he has consulted on environmental policy.  

Normally I would consider the lack of governmental experience to be a drawback, but he is not worse off than Platner there, and probably better in some respects.

Costello probably has a better chance than LaFlamme, whose experience is as an adjunct professor. 

I am not sure that Mills should be discounted. She is experienced as the 75th governor of Maine, state attorney general, and member of the Maine House of Representatives. She was attacked as old and it was probably pretty sexist, and yes, she did withdraw, but she is still on the ballot. If people voted for her, could she be persuaded to campaign in the general? If I were in Maine, I would want to know.

Beyond that, could Costello beat Collins? I don't know, but I don't know that Platner can either. 

Collins votes pretty consistently Republican, but gives lip service to having a conscience. Could she be pushed hard on that, and would anti-Trump sentiment help? Again, I don't know; Maine is pretty white and it shows. 

Still, they might respond to someone speaking passionately and sensibly about the environment.

With Platner, would standing firm behind him be worth it? Once more, I don't know.

He is morally repugnant and that keeps getting worse. That is a problem. He would probably end up being most like a Fetterman, compared to a Sinema or a Manchin. It does still help to have more registered Democrats seated, but some are more helpful than others.

My biggest point from this is that if you only get your information from the people shouting loudest, there is going to be a lot that you don't know.

Much of that loss will be important.

And I will have more examples of the dishonesty. 

Books by Jung Chang

On this last Friday of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2026, things are not going quite as planned.

I mentioned one category that I still needed to get to last week, but I did not say that it consists of books about complex parent-child relationships. Predictably, the material has gotten complicated.

However, two of the books ended up being more about history:

Big Sister, Little Sister, Red Sister: Three Women at the Heart of Twentieth-Century China 

Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China

Both are by Jung Chang 

When writing about my undergraduate degree, and the history aspect, I generally focus on African Americans in the American West. That was my seminar, so where I had more knowledge going and and doing a deeper level of research. The runner-up is history of China (followed by England and Ancient Rome). I took a whole year's worth of 300-level courses. 

Chung's books covered material that was familiar (thought it had been a while) and added a lot more, with clarity, organization, and fascination. 

In Wild Swans, Chung writes the story of her grandmother, her mother, and herself, with lives spanning the end of the Manchu Empire, Japanese occupation, the start of the Republic, the coming of Communism, and the various stages of that, ending with movement toward modernization. 

In a different family dynamic, Big Sister covers the Soong sisters, whom -- through their own influence, wealth and marriages (including Red Sister to Sun-Yat Sen and Little Sister to Chiang Kai-Shek) were intimately involved with China's journey through those same stages. 

Sometimes relationships get complicated, but nothing complicates their lives as much as those changes, especially under Mao. 

I found both of the books very interesting. I look forward to reading Chang's other books, one on Cixi and one on Mao Zedong.

I want to focus on one aspect of Wild Swans.

Chang was a teenager who started with an adoration of Mao, encouraged by a cult of personality. Even as disillusionment came on, it was hard to let go of that attachment and question the revolution itself.

One of the key means of control was turning people against each other. Ostensibly this was to weed out enemies of the state, but it was often used by people to resolve petty grievances and jealousy. 

Even if it was not always obvious how the spite benefited Mao, there were always plenty of examples of spite.

There were also people who tried hard to maintain their integrity -- Chung's father was a tragic example -- and people who remained affectionate and kind.

With one couple, noting their kindness and happiness, Chang concluded that happy people were kind.

I don't think she got it quite right, perhaps not surprising for a teenage girl. 

I think happiness can help one be kind and kindness can help people be happy. 

Kindness can also break your heart. Caring -- especially under such terrible times -- leaves you open to pain.

Being tortured brought on schizophrenia in her father, that had to be treated with insulin shock and electroshock therapy. There were suicides driven by fear and despair. People suffered nervous breakdowns and physical injuries (as well as nutritional deprivation) that affected their health for the rest of their lives.

I just mention it because I think there are lessons for our time about the problems of corruption and the dangers of personality cults and how communism and fascism are equally susceptible to authoritarianism.

Maybe the most important lesson, though, is how much suffering can be caused by petty spite. 

 

The purpose of citations

As irritated as I was with Zdeborova's posts, there is good news that comes with it.

https://x.com/zdeborova/status/2056135395591491632

If you want to read, you can. Her complaint centers on the year-long publishing ban, likening it to having your license suspended for a year if you got caught speeding.

Then she suggests that maybe she should be banned because she cited a paper in her PhD dissertation that did not say what she said it did. 

Maybe she shouldn't be banned solely for that, but if it is her habit (as she indicates) to cite sources without reading them, that might indicate shoddy work that shouldn't have passed the defense.

The issue with both Zdeborova and Miller is that they leap from some errors being inevitable -- to which there is some truth -- to apparently not finding any accountability necessary.

Errors do happen.

For my literature study I read a lot of papers. I kept notes with my sources so I could remember where key points were, and I had copied them into the document I was writing in to make sure I didn't miss anything. 

I left one of those notes in what I turned in. It doesn't make anything inaccurate; it's just something that was only for me. I was mortified to find it, but it still passed.

That being said, I read every single one of those sources, some of them more than once. I also read papers that I didn't use. I read them because I thought they might be relevant, but then they really weren't, even if they were still kind of interesting.

One paper focused on the importance of having family or community members advocating for the patients. A focus of what I was looking at was self-advocacy, which they didn't even consider as a possibility. I noted that contrast, because whether something supports your work is a separate question from whether it is related to your work.

It would be extremely obnoxious to think I know it all now, but this is an area where I am currently spending hours, giving me some perspective on it. You should know what people are saying, even if you end up thinking they are wrong. Referring to previous work is supposed to show that you know the foundation, whether you are supporting it or criticizing it. Not doing that work means your work can't be trusted.

Zdeborova's answer to this is that no one's work should be trusted; that's how science works. People need to research and experiment.

There is a level at which that is true; reproduction of results is important, if not always possible. Papers will generally have a section that clarifies what issues weren't addressed or other factors that should be investigated. However, if there is not going to be anything trustworthy that can be built on in the work of others, then there is no point in publishing or citing anything.

There is a lot more that could be said about honesty, accountability, and respect for knowledge and skill. Instead, I am going to point out the good news.

I name those two people because the vast majority of responses were strenuously objecting. Of course you read your sources! What is wrong with you? 

This is an interesting thing from the background on the new arXiv policy: the last checked rate of hallucinated citations is 1 in every 277 papers. 

https://byteiota.com/arxiv-bans-authors-1-year-for-ai-hallucinated-citations/

That is a tenfold increase in three years, so that is serious. There are also some other stats where the number is higher, but that seems to mean that the papers that have hallucinated citations have multiple, with others having none. 

Still, the majority is not doing it. At least not yet.

A lot of AI and engagement farming with fake stories is designed not just for specific deceptions, but to create a general sense of distrust.

Lots of people are still honest and diligent. They still care. 

That's worth something.

Let's build on that. 

Academia!

You're not tired of Twitter disputes yet, art you? Good!

There was a previous one (I saw it May 18th, but it was from a May 15th article) that had really gotten under my skin.

There are plenty of good reasons to be against AI and there has been a lot of that in the news lately:

https://theconversation.com/news-sites-are-locking-out-the-internet-archive-to-stop-ai-crawling-is-the-open-web-closing-274968 

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/pope-leo-uses-first-major-papal-text-to-warn-about-dangers-of-ai/ar-AA242BKX 

The news sites seem to have been mainly driven by financial issues, and the Pope by concern for humanity. What set off the storm I noticed was caused by arXiv taking action against hallucinated citations: 

https://byteiota.com/arxiv-bans-authors-1-year-for-ai-hallucinated-citations/ 

I had never heard of arXiv before, but they are "a free distribution service and open-access archive" focusing more on science and math.

https://arxiv.org/ 

Their repository includes economics, which was interesting because those were the hit dogs that howled loudest, so to speak.

Hallucinated citations have increased over the past few years. Rightly concerned about this, they have announced that authors submitting papers with references to non-existent papers will be banned for a year and that after their papers will need to be approved by a peer-reviewed source before acceptance.

As is frequently the case, the reason it became a thing is that someone upset said something that other people could not believe.

I believe that was started by James Miller, but then continued by Lenka Zdeborova (whom I'll get to later):

https://x.com/JimDMiller/status/2056514276311916768 

You can read if you want. 

Miller makes what almost seems like a reasonable point; if you spend a lot of time looking at citations, you know that errors happen.

That is true, but there is a big difference between, say, misspelling one author's name or getting a page number wrong, compared to referring to a paper that doesn't exist. An error could make referring to the original paper more difficult, but unless everything is wrong you can probably do some keyword searches referencing the authors or check a different year but the same month of the publication and find it, then check the reference.

His excuse is that he works with lots of coauthors, sometimes who speak different languages, and he has to trust them. When you start referring to twenty coauthors, I start to wonder what level of academic rigor is being upheld.

For the research I have been working on, the greatest number of authors on any of the papers in my literature study was six. 

Some of this seems to relate to working with graduate students, and also trying to be cited as much as possible. 

The graduate students probably need more supervision than putting twenty on a single paper would provide. 

For being cited a lot, one of the things that came up was one person bragging about his H index, which started a big conversation on how some of the most important foundational work doesn't even get cited like that because it is part of the foundation and doesn't need a citation; everyone is familiar.

The one bragging appears to have deleted his post, but it was connected here to a brief but good thread :

https://x.com/DoloresGMorris/status/2058943409801371860 

It doesn't seem to be something that most authors are pursuing. If you publish something interesting that gives others ideas for extending the research, you probably will get cited, but is that the motivation or advancing knowledge?

Because knowledge won't be advanced by hallucinating AI.