Resilience with a twist

When the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) first uttered his renowned words, "What doesn't kill me makes me stronger" in the 19th century, he likely couldn't have foreseen the modern twist that young people in China are giving it, with their adaptation: "What doesn't kill me now will eventually kill me."

Similar phrases include "Dare to anger me? Well, congratulations, you've just kicked cotton" and "Any problem can defeat me".

Known as "self-deprecating literature", these phrases are marked by sarcasm and wit, typically beginning with confidence and ending with a self-defeating tone. They represent a new approach that Chinese youth are taking on while dealing with life's challenges.

Many young internet users, particularly those transitioning from school to society, adopt this unconventional language to vent their emotional pressures. Instead of harboring resentment and negativity, they choose to embrace their limitations, find humor in them, and forge ahead.

This attitude perfectly embodies the laid-back outlook and the wisdom of young people today. "Life has knocked me down time and again, but it has molded me into bouncy and resilient meatballs," wrote a young netizen after expressing his frustrations with life.

Instant game magic 

How many steps does it take to transform an image into a game like Super Mario Bros?

The answer from Genie: Just one step.

Recently, Google DeepMind unveiled a groundbreaking foundational world model called Generative Interactive Environments, or Genie, capable of creating an "interactive, playable" 2D world from a single image prompt.

According to the Genie team, the model can recognize the main character in a user-uploaded image, identify controllable parts, and anticipate potential actions within the environment it generates, all without the need for action labeling.

Last month, OpenAI presented Sora, a video model that generates high-definition and highly realistic videos from text. In comparison to Sora, Genie does not prioritize visual realism. Instead, it focuses on predicting potential actions in each image.

Jeff Clune, one of the team members, input a picture drawn by his children depicting an eagle in the sky into Genie, and they witnessed the eagle flying around in the sky within the world created by it. "One amazing thing is that Genie enables anyone, including children, to draw a world and then 'step into it' and explore it," he wrote on X, formerly Twitter.