I support whatever Ukrainians want to do with their territories on their own land. If I am allowed to have personal wishes regarding Ukraine, they will be: Never concede any territories.  Pause all high casualty ground offensives regardless of the outcome. If Rashists have offensives, set up optimal meat grinders to induce their human wave assaults to incur maximum casualties on them. Beef up SOF activities and drone/missile attacks in the occupied territories to maintain constant maximum pain on occupiers. Work with international communities constantly to impose maximum sanctions on PRC's Russia province. Rejuvenate Ukraine's legendary defense industry to provide the bulk of the weapons to sustain the fight and churn out high-performance and highly cost-effective weapons. Start reconstruction now and integrate the economy with the EU as much as possible to bring back high single-digit or even double-digit growth. Ukraine has both the brains and resources to make it with intern...

I regarded the US News World Report's college ranking as the gold standard when I was applying to US schools. My faith in it faded slightly over time for various reasons. It is their ranking of a bunch of PRC colleges in the top 1% that made me realize the deep flaws of the ranking. The primary function of a college is education of which critical independent thinking is the most important part. How can a college with little academic freedom and a lot of mandatory indoctrination be ranked among the world's top 1% ? The ranking is largely about research.  I fully appreciate the high correlation between research and education, but there are two issues for this method: 1. The correlation is not a simple linear relationship. 2. Their way of research assessment is flawed - the PRC is not a normal free country. You cannot apply the same method used for a normal country to the PRC. Academic fraud in the PRC is rampant . For example, with their method, the Chinese middle school dropout ...