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Articles by Alex E. Chen
Planned Parenthood
Press enter or click to view image in full size Planned Parenthood Maya’s fingers find the carabiner again. Thirty floors up, Manhattan spreads below like scattered light on black water. October wind, sharp with the promise of winter. “You see that Lee Miller thing?” Danny calls from across the building face. “Expires tonight.” Her descender clicks once, testing. Danny used to write television. Now he cleans windows with the precision of someone who’s learned to trust smaller things.
Rope Access
Press enter or click to view image in full size Rope Access The knot was a lie. It was perfect. The lie was in his head, a phantom ache born from the memory of his brother’s face. He could see the living room he hadn’t visited in months, the ghost of a headline about a comedian’s show scrolling by on the television. His brother, in his faded Giants t-shirt, had stood with his hands clenched. “They’re not on our side,” he’d said, his words clipped, not about a network, but about the world.
Bubba
Press enter or click to view image in full size Bubba Jon’s phone buzzed with the morning wisdom: *Most of us are willing to spend six or eight years to get a diploma. We believe the diploma is necessary for our happiness. But very few of us are willing to spend three or six months or even a year to train ourselves to handle our sadness or our anger, to listen with compassion, and to use loving speech.* He pocketed the phone and pulled on his red lifeguard shorts.
The Providence of Small People
The provocation was the only real currency Leo had left. "Don't ask about my son, Marcus," he said, the hum of the museum gallery a quiet witness. "Ask about me, next time." For years, his son's troubles had been a black hole, pulling every conversation, every feeling, into its dark gravity. Leo was a ghost in his own life, a man defined by a crisis that was not his. He was done with the dance of adults - the cutting compliments, the polite deceits.
Untitled
The Inheritance Elle stared at the Venmo request: *Sage - $600 - "Emergency pls"* Three months since Maya left. Three months of ramen and half-finished canvases, the painting in her corner still caught between angry reds and desperate blues from the night Maya packed her records into milk crates. Elle's hand searched the couch cushions - a nervous habit inherited from her grandmother, fingers hunting phantom scraps of tinfoil. Nothing thrown away. Not even the cost of peace.
A Taste for Despair
A Taste for Despair The smell was a kind of beige geometry. A cube of artificial everything, engineered to be both instantly recognizable and vaguely repellent. At the line at Taco Bell, the familiar hum of despair began in Elara's jaw. She knew the AI would have already indexed it: Olfactory Data Stream: Causal link to low-cost food production.
The Doonesbury Defense
The Doonesbury Defense Professor Weinstein's glasses slipped as the call came in. Through his office window, morning light caught the torn Communist Party poster clinging to the bookstore glass - someone had ripped it away overnight, leaving only hunters' boots and half the words "ROAM PROUDLY." "Your son is an adult now, Mrs. Chen." His voice carried decades of patience. The boy had stolen engine parts from the sailing program, planned to ship his restored boat from Denver home to New England.
The Water Pump
The Water Pump The certificate from the training still sat on Margaret's kitchen counter, its edges curled slightly from the humidity that seemed to seep into everything since the pump broke. Child Sexual Abuse Prevention, it read, with her name printed in formal script below. She'd completed it yesterday, but kept returning to one moment from the final module: a young girl's hand reaching toward the camera, trusting, open. Margaret's own hands had trembled on the keyboard.
THE SUBURBAN VERSION
MALENA: THE SUBURBAN VERSION ## A 20-Minute Short Film **FADE IN:** **EXT. WILLOWBROOK ESTATES - DAY** A pristine suburban neighborhood. Identical lawns stretch endlessly, each precisely maintained with chemical precision. Not a dandelion in sight. **TYLER (V.O.)** That summer, I thought I knew everything about lawn care. Scotts Turf Builder in spring, Crabgrass Preventer in early summer, Fall fertilizer by Labor Day. I was fifteen and already a slave to the suburban gospel of chemical perfection.
The Talented Choices
The Talented Choices Jake's alarm had been going off for three minutes before he realized the sound wasn't coming from his phone. Across the narrow dorm room, his new roommate - Maya, according to the housing assignment email - was mumbling at her laptop screen while Bing Crosby crooned about white Christmases. The irony hit him through his pre-coffee haze: September 1st in Maine, eighty-two degrees and humid as a greenhouse.
A Deep Dive into Advanced Vector Search
Over the past year, I've been building a semantic search engine from the ground up. Somewhere around the 50-millionth vector, I realized that naive querying wasn't going to cut it - not unless I wanted latency spikes and ballooning infrastructure bills. So I dove deep into advanced querying techniques for vector databases and found that smart strategies - like multivector queries, range searches, and optimized indexing - made a world of difference.
Main Street Beats
Main Street Beats Maya Chen's Honda sat in the empty parking lot for twenty minutes before she killed the engine. Through the windshield, Main Street stretched like a held breath - storefront shadows, a single traffic light blinking yellow into nothing, the kind of quiet that made her Bowdoin training feel loud and unnecessary. The community center key stuck. Everything in Maine seemed to stick, she was learning.
NEVER TOO EXPENSIVE FOR LOVE
NEVER TOO EXPENSIVE FOR LOVE **GIOVANNI BORGHESE** — 75, former aristocrat, magnificent in his delusions The stage represents the elegant lobby and common areas of the legendary hotel. A grand staircase leads to upper levels (hotel rooms, conference room). Stage left suggests the restaurant area. Stage right, a raised platform represents the famous floating pool. Upstage, a painted scrim shows the breathtaking Lake Como vista, which changes with lighting throughout the play.
It Takes Two To Argue
Put in another way, one person can start an argument, but it takes two to keep that argument going. This is useful advice for whenever we get upset at someone and argue with them. Recently, I’ve been teaching summer school to kids around 10 years old, and an incident reminded me of this proverb. One student named Albert came into class late and saw two plastic water bottles on his table. He said, “These aren’t mine,” and then put one water bottle on his neighbor Leon’s desk.
The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Really, Really Inconvenient
The Pursuit of Life Where It Seems Really, Really Inconvenient The sulfur tang hit Dr. Karen Lloyd’s nostrils like a geological slap — eight kilometers of rock pressing overhead, the weight of ambition made literal. She adjusted the microscope’s focus, watching a single bacterium that had remained motionless for seventy-two hours, as patient as stone.
The Great Coffee Shop Charade
*8:15 AM at Brewster’s Coffee. JORDAN (20, film student barista) wipes down tables while secretly filming with his phone. CASEY (19, psych major) takes notes behind the espresso machine.* **JORDAN:** *(whispering to phone)* “Day one of what I’m calling ‘The Tuesday Morning Experiment.’ Subjects approaching.” SARAH MITCHELL (45, former sorority president) enters with military precision, immediately beginning her morning ritual of reorganizing the condiment station.
The Deep End of Expectations
Press enter or click to view image in full size The Deep End of Expectations A Swimming Comedy in Four Acts Act I: The Confident Entry **YMCA Pool Deck — 6:15 AM** Robert Chen, 72, strides onto the pool deck like he’s approaching the shores of Waikiki — chest out, swim cap positioned with the precision of someone who’s conquered six continents of water. His goggles hang around his neck like a trophy.
Benchmarking Vector Databases: What I Learned from Pushing 500K Vectors Through Their Limits
Modern AI workloads demand more than just scalable infrastructure — they need precision, speed, and a database stack that doesn’t fold under pressure. Over the past few weeks, I’ve been testing how well vector databases actually hold up under practical conditions. I focused on two popular benchmarking tools — ANN Benchmark and VectorDBBench — to evaluate how different systems trade off between recall and throughput.
How I Tuned Memory Efficiency in Vector Search with Product Quantization
Vector search at scale is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you get powerful similarity matching for high-dimensional data — essential for things like image retrieval, recommendations, or retrieval-augmented generation (RAG). On the other hand, you’re paying for it in memory and speed, especially when dealing with millions or billions of embeddings. Lately, while building a semantic search engine over a corpus of multimodal embeddings (text + image), I hit memory bottlenecks hard.
Grandma is Afraid You’re Hungry Part 3
I’m back at my grandma’s place in China again for a short visit, and of course, my grandma is always telling me to eat more even though I’m already full. But this time, I had a different challenge. I got sick. It’s very hot here, and the room I’m sleeping in only has a fan, not AC, so I got heatstroke, which involves throwing up, diarrhea, and feelings of dizziness and weakness.
How I Use KNN and ANN to Power Fast, Scalable Vector Search
All the latest news and updates on the rapidly evolving field of Generative AI space. From cutting-edge research and developments in LLMs, text-to-image generators, to real-world applications, and the impact of generative AI on various industries.
What I Learned Benchmarking GPU-Powered Vector Search with cuVS and Milvus
Learn, explore, or build the future of AI with top stories on the latest trends, tools, and technology. Share your crazy success stories or AI-fueled fails in a supportive community. Follow publication I’ve been knee-deep in performance tuning lately while building out a semantic search system. One challenge kept surfacing: CPU-bound vector search doesn’t scale as smoothly as I hoped — especially when pushing past 100 million vectors.
What I Learned Benchmarking GPU-Powered Vector Search with cuVS and Milvus
I’ve been knee-deep in performance tuning lately while building out a semantic search system. One challenge kept surfacing: CPU-bound vector search doesn’t scale as smoothly as I hoped — especially when pushing past 100 million vectors. So I started exploring GPU-accelerated indexing, particularly using NVIDIA’s cuVS library and the CAGRA algorithm. Here’s what I learned after some hands-on testing and analysis. Let’s say you’re building a RAG pipeline.
The Importance of Etiquette in Daily Life
I recently read this news article about a sign that a coffee shop in Richmond posted outside their shop. The coffee shop is called CUPS Coffee & Tea, and the sign reads: “Small coffee $5.00. Small coffee, please $3.00.
When to Choose a Vector Library vs. a Vector Database: Lessons from Real-World Search Experiments
Learn, explore, or build the future of AI with top stories on the latest trends, tools, and technology. Share your crazy success stories or AI-fueled fails in a supportive community. Follow publication Over the past few months, I’ve been neck-deep in building a semantic search system from scratch. Along the way, I kept running into the same architectural fork: should I use a lightweight vector library like FAISS, or opt for a more full-featured vector database?
Changing Others Requires Long-Term Accompaniment
Recently, I finished teaching a two-month English course aimed at helping some students pass their IELTS test. Most of them are beginner level, but they need to pass the lower-intermediate or intermediate level. In other words, it’s no small feat. Throughout these two months, I realized that the hardest thing isn’t teaching English or IELTS tactics. The hardest thing is helping the students maintain a good emotional state.
The Problem of Entitlement
Albert is a farmer, and his chickens lay many eggs every day. He cannot eat them all, so he decides to offer two eggs to his neighbor Ben every day. Ben likes eggs, and he is very happy and thankful towards Albert. As time goes on, Ben eventually becomes used to receiving two eggs from Albert every day, and he expects it just like he expects the sun to rise in the morning. One day, Albert was talking to his other neighbor, Chris, and he found out that Chris also loves eggs.
A Meditation Resolved Before It Even Started: The Conflict Between Yu and Rui
At the end of the Shang Dynasty (about 3000 years ago) in China’s history, the State of Yu (虞) and the State of Rui (芮) were neighbours. They had peaceful relations for many years, but with the succession of new rulers, eventually, a conflict broke out regarding a piece of land at the border of the two states. This piece of land was about ten li (5 kilometres) in area, and it was full of lush forest and fertile soil.
The Infinite Game: Playing for Lasting Success, Not Just Winning
Member-only story Alex Chen · Follow 5 min read · -- There is no such thing as ‘winning’ an infinite game. In an infinite game, the primary objective is to keep playing. What if success isn’t about winning, but about knowing how to keep playing? In ‘The Infinite Game,’ Simon Sinek challenges conventional business thinking by introducing the concept of finite and infinite games, arguing that organizations thrive when leaders adopt an infinite mindset.
Don’t Make The Simple Complicated
Alex Chen · Follow 3 min read · -- Image Source John wanted to hang a painting on his wall, and he invited his friend over to help. Just as they were about to put the nails in, the friend said, “Hang on, I think it’s better if we put two boards of wood on the wall first, then put the nails in the wood, and then hang the painting.” John respected his friend’s wish and looked for a board of wood. After he found one and brought it over, they started to position it on the wall.
Building Agent-Based Intelligent Recommendation and Decision Making System
Member-only story Alex Chen · Follow 5 min read · -- Recommendation systems are evolving into dynamic, agent-based tools that prioritize interaction and intelligent decision-making. These systems guide users through a thoughtful process by collecting their metadata, preferences, and requests while dynamically narrowing down options based on their priorities.
What You Focus On, Grows
Recently, I visited and caught up with some friends in different places in China and Canada as I return home to Toronto from China, and these two concepts have recurred over and over: • What you focus on, grows. • The energy you give is the energy you attract. These two ideas are interrelated, but the first one is arguably more fundamental because what we focus on determines our energy, and then the energy that we give others is the energy we attract back.
How To Identify Improper Religions and Cults
Do you have a negative impression of religion? Many people do, and it's because improper religions are so common nowadays. What's more, many people get sucked into improper religions, thinking that they are being "saved" and that they need to "save" others. Even if we haven't encountered improper religions yet, we or our loved ones might encounter them in the future, so it's important to know how to differentiate proper religions from improper ones.
What's It Actually Like?
If you live in Japan or you're planning to move there, or if you're a fan of Terrace House, you've probably heard of share houses. Although living alone and living with family are the two most common housing arrangements in Japan, share houses present an alternative option and have become quite popular over the years. Lots of share houses advertise benefits like flexible contracts, cheap rent, low start-up costs, and friendly communities. But do they really deliver on these promises?
The Reason Most People Fail When Learning Languages
Language learning has never been more popular. Many people start learning because they enjoy pop culture and media from certain countries. Others do because they have family members who they want to communicate with, or because they want to unlock new career opportunities. These are all fantastic reasons to start! They don't set the right goals. Sadly, most people end up quitting for this reason: Good vs bad goals A good goal is specific and has a clear definition of success.
Let Your Ideals Scrape Off Your Own Faults
We all have standards and ideals for what we think a good person should be. As for how we use these standards, there are four possibilities: Strictly demand others and oneself Strictly demand others but lenient with oneself Lenient with others and oneself Lenient with others but strictly demand oneself Most people tend to use these standards to demand others (#1 and #2), and they are usually more strict with others and lenient with themselves (#2). This is a key cause of conflict.
3 Reasons Why You Should Join a Band as Soon as Possible
If you're a musician and want to get better at your craft, joining a band is one of the best decisions you can make. Most people have the misconception that you have to be a really good musician before joining a band. I've learned from experience that it's actually the exact opposite. You become a really good musician BY joining a band. During my high school and college days, I learned how to play the guitar and bass with YouTube and UltimateGuitar.
Sense The Attitude Behind The Words
Recently in a workshop class, a participant asked the teacher, "If a high level leader skips the middle level manager and directly orders the bottom level employee to do something, and then this bottom level employee doesn't report the matter to his manager, is this wrong?" Before I let you know what the teacher said, you can think about the answer first. Personally, I thought "Of course that's wrong. The bottom level employee needs to report any work they got from other people to his manager.
From Hating Parents to Loving Parents
Recently, I attended a workshop on Traditional Chinese Culture, and one of the workshop participants said something that really confused me. He's around 60 years old, and he said, "When I was young, I was often beaten by my mother. She had a terrible temper. I resented her a lot. I told myself, 'When I grow up, if I have children, I will definitely not be like my mother.
How Learning a New Language Changed My Life
Ah, languages. Everyone's had some experience learning them, willingly or not. Most of us have memories of grinding our way through Spanish or French classes in school for years, only to forget all but a couple of essential phrases like " Where is the library? " I've been there. "Foreign languages are useful," they said. "You can travel and communicate with people from all over the world," they said.
Nobody Does Wrong Willingly
"Nobody Does Wrong Willingly." -Socrates We all try to do what we think is right. No one thinks, " I just want to be a stupid person and do wrong things." YET, a lot of us will jump to conclusions and criticize others as if they are stupid or intentionally wanted to do wrong. So before we criticize others, we should ask ourselves, " Why might they think what they are doing is right?
Why Human Nature Is Good And Its Significance
Have you ever wondered if human nature is good or bad? I certainly have. From a broad perspective, we all wish to live in a good world, and that means a world full of good people. If human nature is good, then this ideal feels achievable. If human nature is bad, then it feels rather difficult, which decreases our motivation to create a better world. I also had a friend once lament about how some people are just terrible.
Stop Demanding Others. Start Cultivating Compassion.
“Ascending to Heaven is hard. Demanding others is even harder.” — Chinese Idiom Think about all the things that upset, annoy, or worry you. Chances are, a significant amount are related to other people. Ancient philosophers teach that suffering comes from desire, and one of the most stubborn desires we have is demanding others to be a certain way.
Philosophy Session with Chopsticks
At my home in Toronto, I usually use a spoon or fork to eat, and I don’t often use chopsticks. But now that I’m in China for school, I use chopsticks every meal. The thing is, my technique is not proper. Actually, I didn’t even know there’s a “proper” technique. I just kind of figured out a way to use chopsticks on my own. One time during a meal, a teacher saw me using chopsticks incorrectly, and he tried to teach me.
Don’t Publicize Family Disgrace
Have you ever talked badly about your family to others? There’s a Chinese saying that goes, “Do not talk about family disgrace outside the family.” (In Chinese: 家醜不可外揚) The first time I heard this, it really intrigued me. In western culture, it seems quite normal for people to complain about their family towards others. What’s the big deal? Everyone has family troubles, and it’s human sentiment to want to rant to some friends once in a while, right?
Rules, Punishments, and Rewards
Recently, I was learning about the great sage kings of ancient China, one of them being Emperor Shun. In class, my teacher said that Emperor Shun was the first to establish severe punishments, such as amputating limbs and even the death sentence for breaking the law. He then asked us, “If Shun is so compassionate and virtuous, why would he implement such cruel punishments?” I had this exact question in my head at the time, and the class had a discussion. What do you think?
Sleep Tips from Traditional Chinese Medicine
I'm currently reading a book called 中医养生学, which in English means "the study of health maintenance in Chinese Medicine". The book talks about many topics such as emotions, food, exercise, sleep, living environment, and lots more. I recently finished reading the chapter on sleep, and there are lots of basic knowledge that I think we should all know, but many of us might not know. I personally don't have sleep problems, but I know many people do nowadays, so I'll share my learnings in this article.
The Under-Appreciated Heroes
A young man went to apply for a managerial position in a big company. He passed the initial interview and now he was about to meet the director for his final interview. The director discovered from his resume that the youth's academic achievements were excellent. He asked, " Did you obtain any scholarships in school? " The young man answered " No ". "Was it your father who paid for your school fees? " "My father passed away when I was one year old. It was my mother who paid for my school fees.
Family Is Not A Place For Blame
A while back, someone told me about a conflict she said with her sister. She said that she is normally a kind and patient person, but her sister is extremely rude and unreasonable towards her. During a family vacation, her sister kept getting on her nerves, and eventually, she had an angry outburst at her sister. Later, she felt bad and guilty about her angry outburst, and she asked for my thoughts. I asked her if she loves her parents. She said she loves them dearly.
Neutralization, effector function and immune imprinting of Omicron variants - Nature
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Abstract Currently circulating SARS-CoV-2 variants have acquired convergent mutations at hot spots in the receptor-binding domain1 (RBD) of the spike protein. The effects of these mutations on viral infection and transmission and the efficacy of vaccines and therapies remains poorly understood. Here we demonstrate that recently emerged BQ.1.1 and XBB.1.5 variants bind host ACE2 with high affinity and promote membrane fusion more efficiently than earlier Omicron variants.
By Luca Piccoli, James Case, Young-Jun Park, Kaitlin R Sprouse, Jessica Bassi, Christian Saliba, Katja Culap, Anushka Rajesh, Jiayi Zhou, Dana Bohan, Alex E. Chen, Florian A. Lempp, Lauriane Kergoat, Florence Larrous, Alessandro Ceschi, Paolo Ferrari, Laura Rosen, Nicholas M. Franko, Cameron Stewart Verified, Helen Y. Chu, Hervé Bourhy, Michael Schmid, Lisa A. Purcell, Gyorgy Snell, Michael Diamond Verified, Davide Corti, Francesco Muoio, Marco Dini, Exequiel Dellota Jr, Olivier Giannini, Jennifer Logue
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