Kold | failed founder, 15 strays

November 19, 2021. 4:00 PM. Beijing.That year, I had my first heart surgery, and my company went bankrupt.People think a breakdown sounds like an explosion. It doesn’t. It’s just a quiet process of losing things, one by one. First I lost my business. Then I lost the capital to ever start over. Finally, I lost my health.The surgery itself wasn't massive, but I wasn't ready to die. When you suddenly realize your own body could give out at any moment—and you have nothing left to fall back on—your nervous system just shuts down. I had nowhere to go, no office to show up to. Every single day, I lived in sheer terror of dying. Financial security, physical security, my grip on life itself—all of it vanished overnight.My wife, who has been with me since we had nothing, stayed right by my side. She did everything a human being could possibly do to pull me out. But I was at the bottom of a dry well, and I couldn't move.I stopped sleeping. Out of twenty-four hours, I could barely get two. Because I couldn’t sleep, the strain on my nerves and my heart got worse. And the more my heart ached, the more terrified I was to close my eyes in the dark.I took every sedative and antidepressant the doctors could legally prescribe. If you asked me whether the pills worked—well, they kept me sitting upright. But when night came, I was still staring at the ceiling until dawn. Anyone who has lived through a year and a half of severe depression knows what a fucked-up feeling that is.To protect my blood vessels and rehab my heart, I forced myself to walk twice a day, forty minutes each time. Just putting one foot in front of the other, like a prisoner on yard time.On November 19, 2021, a little past 4 PM, my wife and I went out for our usual walk.Ten minutes in, about a hundred meters ahead at the intersection, I saw a stray dog. A small, dirty black mutt—the most ordinary kind you see everywhere in China.He was trotting toward us. The low winter sun was shining right in front of him, catching the edges of his messy fur. He was literally bouncing along the street, completely carefree, like he owned the afternoon.I stopped and said something very simple to my wife:"Look at that stray dog. He has nothing, and he's still pretty happy."By the time we turned the corner, he was gone. I was still thinking about him when we reached the intersection—and there he was again. He had doubled back and was giving us a wide berth, trying to slip away down another street. Stray dogs know early on that staying away from people is how you stay alive.I reached into my pocket. My blood sugar was also a mess back then, so my wife always kept a few pieces of dry cheese in my coat in case my sugar crashed. I pulled one out, tossed it toward him, and said, "Here, little guy. Have some cheese."He walked over, sniffed it once, and left it on the ground.I didn't think much of it. Maybe a street dog doesn't even know what cheese is. I turned around and kept walking.A few minutes later, I felt something behind me. I looked back. It was him.I’ve had dogs before, so I wasn't afraid. He kept a strict distance—about thirty meters back—and just followed me. I still had forty minutes of my walk left, so I figured, let him follow if he wants to.I ended up walking for a full hour. And for a full hour, he stayed right behind me.Countless cars passed us on the road. When we entered our neighborhood, the security guards saw this dirty stray trailing me and tried several times to chase him off. I stopped them every time.By any normal logic, a feral stray doesn't follow a stranger who couldn't even bribe him with food for an entire hour. Yet he did. Thirty meters behind me, step by step, he followed me all the way home and walked right into my courtyard. Standing there looking at him, a quiet thought hit me: the universe is handing me the responsibility for this life.I was in no condition to take on another burden. I could barely keep myself alive, and we already had a big dog at home. But I felt that if heaven hands you an assignment, you don't say no. You see it through.I named him Liuda (溜达)—a Chinese word that means to stroll around with nowhere particular to go.I built him a makeshift shelter in the yard against the winter cold, got a crate ready, and started taking him to the vet for bloodwork and vaccines. And something strange happened. Once my hands were busy keeping this fragile little creature warm and fed, my brain didn't have the bandwidth to obsess over my own death twenty-four hours a day. For the first time in months, a tiny crack of light got in. Finally, the day came when he cleared all his medical checks and was bathed and ready to come inside the house.I looked at my wife and said, "Let him sleep in my room tonight. He’s been wandering the streets his whole life. He doesn't even know what a bed feels like."Back then, I was a sick man. As long as I wasn't asking for anything crazy, my wife said yes to everything.That night, Liuda climbed onto my bed for the first time and lay down beside me. For six straight months before that night, I had never slept more than three hours. I turned off the lights, reached out in the dark, and rested my hand on his side. Beneath my palm, I felt the warmth of his fur and the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest. He didn't move a muscle. He just lay there, breathing quietly in the dark.And just like that, the wire inside my head that had been pulled tight for half a year finally went slack.That was the night I got my sleep back.It has been five years since that winter afternoon. Liuda has slept beside me every single night for five years.To most of the world, he is just a cheap, nameless street dog—as humble and insignificant a life as you can find.To me, he is the creature who walked through traffic for an hour, thirty meters behind a broken man, to lead me back from the edge.If you are in the middle of that dark tunnel right now, looking for a way out: stop forcing your broken brain to figure it out. Go stand in the 4 PM sun. Go put your hand on a warm, breathing life. Sometimes what saves you isn't an answer. It’s just a quiet breath next to yours in the dark.

Dario says AI will soon make cancer and Alzheimer's relics of the past. I want to believe him. I've had three heart surgeries. My cardiologist still prescribes a drug older than most AI engineers. It still works. Cures are easy to announce. Hard to ship.

Since 1997 I've heard "this changes everything" about the web, mobile, crypto, and now AI. Three of them actually did. The trick was never guessing which. It was surviving long enough to find out.

Fail at 25: it's a lesson. Fail at 45: it's a biography. Recover at 50: the only chapter worth reading.

I use AI every day. Not to get rich, not to "stay ahead." To think out loud with something that won't flinch. After losing a company and most of my nerve, that turned out to be worth more than any productivity gain.

Three heart surgeries taught me one thing about being "indispensable." Every time, I was sure things would fall apart while I was under. Every time, they didn't. The world doesn't need you to hold it up. Strangely, that turned out to be the good news.

Used to run a company. Now I run a yard: 13 cats, 2 dogs. Same rule as before: everyone eats before I do.

Jensen Huang spent 33 years as the answer to "who runs Nvidia." Whatever you think of how it ended, here's the part nobody covers: the morning after, the phone stops. The calendar empties. You find out how much of you was the job. Been there. It takes years.

I think Jensen Huang is a real man's man.

Fiber 5.2 full-code generation, a scene that heals the soul.

In the dead of night, lay your hand on your conscience, look up to the heavens, and ask yourself: could you really do any better than he did?

The problem with the world is that we expect everyone in the spotlight to be a flawless deity.

I think this whole thing has been blown out of proportion. It's a minor issue and completely normal for any living creature. How many people on this earth would dare swear to God that they've never done something similar in their lives? It's just a matter of whether you're aware of it or not, or whether you have enough importance.Attributing an individual's failure in the battle between hormones and reason to a major societal event is quite a ridiculous proposition.

Realistically speaking, humanity has had thousands of years, and look at what we've done. With the social operating systems we've created, how many of you actually consider them fair? What is the wealth gap ratio between the poorest and richest people in the world, and does that disparity truly reflect a difference in their abilities? This is where the system's distribution mechanism has a fundamental flaw. From the Stone Age, we've always used war and violence to resolve every dispute. And today, look at Israel: what more sophisticated methods have we learned? It is nothing more than swapping stones and clubs for missiles, drones, and even nuclear weapons. Therefore, I believe thousands of years of history have proven that human nature and capability are just at this level. As long as a small minority controls social resources, we will never break through to optimize our systemic structures. That is why I support AI taking over everything: giving it a try is far better than sheer despair.Another thing I want to say is: Who can speak for humanity? Is it a minority of elites? Is it governments? Is it billionaires? What gives you the right to make decisions for everyone else?

Whether a species, a nation, or even a civilization, it is the same.

The age of true creativity is opening up, and creativity is no longer a privileged game backed by money.Respect.