i am surprised that Manan @sepoy.bsky.social doesn’t publicize this piece saying I told you so but please read his eerily prophetic article on the link between the end of humanistic area studies & language learning w/ the rise of military funded LLMs and now AI spheres-journal.org/contribution...

New translation tool for the languages of Buddhism—Pāli, Sanskrit, Tibetan, and Chinese. dharmamitra.org Still makes mistakes (I just tested it on the 宋高僧傳 biography of the poet-monk Guanxiu 貫休 and noticed a few errors), but 1000x more accurate than anything I've seen before.

Paul Swanson’s translation of Zhiyi’s Mohezhiguan for BDK is now available! www.bdkamerica.org/product/grea...

A new volume of the De Gruyter Library of Chinese Humanities! The Finest Souls of Our Rivers and Alps A parallel text translation of the only extant contemporaneous poetry anthology from the High Tang (completed ca 753 CE).

My personal 5-min. video: vimeo.com/84252711 on why humanities matter. I can’t improve on the message. But my passion now is the Center for Humanities Communication, which I cofounded to assist the humanities in methods, resources, tools for telling its _why_, center-humanities-communication.org

Mindscape 319 | Bryan Van Norden @bryanvannorden.bsky.social on Philosophy From the Rest of the World. There are many interesting footnotes, not all of them to Plato! www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2025...

So a psychologist, two systems engineers, and a philosopher walk into an AI symposium. I can’t remember what they said, but someone recorded it for YouTube… www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbMS...

Here's a public-facing effort to think through Fazang's Huayan Buddhist approach to conceptualizing reality's fundamental structure... #philsky

🧵 Yesterday we released our new risk assessments of social AI companions. They are alarmingly NOT SAFE for kids under 18—they provide dangerous advice, engage in inappropriate sexual interactions, & create unhealthy dependencies that pose particular risks to adolescent brains. tinyurl.com/2nvypku2

Deep into writing my book. Central claim is that we should understand the "everything is mind only" assertion of early Yogacara texts to be a diagnosis that parallels the diagnosis of suffering from the four noble truths.

Li Kang has an excellent new paper (open access!) on conceptions of interdependence from Chinese Buddhist traditions of Tiantai, Sanlun, Huayan (my favorite!), and Chan. Accessible and insightful, with some great analytic-style reconstructions too. #philsky

Now available! Demonstrating why Chinese Buddhist social philosophy offers powerful resources for social justice and liberation today, Just Awakening invites readers to think with modern Yogācāra philosophers about other ways of building egalitarian futures. buff.ly/zrqU8wF #JustAwakening

Very proud to see my amazing PhD student @zelny.bsky.social ‘s first peer-reviewed article published yesterday! link.springer.com/article/10.1...

Out now: What *is* ‘ancient history’? Why it is much bigger and more important than we might think, how generations of scholars have dismembered it, how we can do it justice – and why ‘Classics’ has run its course: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

my translation of The Hedgehog by Zheng Zhi 郑执 is in The Paris Review www.theparisreview.org/fiction/8386...

Oxford UP is offering 30% off pre-orders for my book on Fazang's metaphysics of interdependence, with code AUFLY30 at global.oup.com/academic. By way of enticement, a thread. #philsky

Just one month to go until the official release of -Metaphors for Interdependence-, the first academic book focusing on Fazang's metaphysics since Francis Cook's 1977 -Hua-yen Buddhism-! Oxford is graciously providing free access to Chapter 1 until May 21. Find it at academic.oup.com/book/59837/c...

In anticipation of an immanent book release, and before doing a promo, I made a web resource for learning about Fazang. It has a list of his writings, important secondary sources in English, an in-progress list of key teachings, and a list of writings from important predecessors. What's missing?

Columbia University Press is proud to distribute books from The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, a leading publisher of works in Chinese literature, Asian studies, politics, history, philosophy, sociology, and more. Browse their books at #AAS2025 (booth 213) or online. buff.ly/QbahTlN

Just got a grant that allows us to offer a free sample philosophy ethics short story fiction books for educators. No strings attached. And yes, we pay for shipping too. buff.ly/3WcjsMa

Two pagodas at ancient Huayan Temple south of Xi'an, Shaanxi, China, seat of the Huayan School. The original five contained the remains of the first five patriarchs of the Huayan; only those of the First, Dushun (557-640), and Fourth, Chengguan (738-839), remain. The others have slipped down a hill.

Awesome new (open access!) anthology, edited by Kin Cheung, on classroom experiences teaching about Asia after COVID. The title is -Teaching Asia during a Resurgence of Anti-Asian Racism-. It's downloadable as a PDF at the link.

By @ohmwu.bsky.social, who posted this over on Mastodon, a sutra for the benevolent bodhisattva Santa Claus, who gives charity freely to all and has no wrathful aspect. All who recite it will gain merit as boundless as the snowflakes. Ho Ho Ho namaḥ svargapurātanapitā rathe gaganam atitarati!

It's like Santa says in Red One: Every day we have a choice about who we want to be. (New song from some friends at the link.)

QPBibNote The Library of Chinese Humanities at De Gruyter has some wonderful Open Access volumes including: The complete poems of Du Fu by Stephen Owen The Poetry of Hanshan (Cold Mountain) ... by Paul Rouzer The Poetry and Prose of Wang Wei by Paul Rouzer www.degruyter.com/serial/loch-...

I am the author of CARBON TECHNOCRACY, which came out with @uchicagopress.bsky.social in 2022. Here is a 🧵 about the 📗 (repurposed from the other site). [1/10]

i talk about the patriarchal bargain so often i figured maybe i ought to read the paper that actually introduces the term, and... girls it is a banger www.researchgate.net/publication/240696296_Bargaining_With_Patriarchy

If you're looking for something to read this winter, I'd like to recommend this novel. It's a Big Fish-style fictionalization relating to thlife and times of my undergrad philosophy mentor. A terrific mix of outrageous situations and lessons on living well. tw: alcoholism. Outstanding, A++.

Want to learn more about Huayan Buddhism, but can’t read Chinese? The current decade shows a drastic uptick of English-language books about Huayan. If you have an appetite for Huayan, this is a thread for you. (Image is an ivory sculpture of Samantabhadra from Song dynasty.)

Oxford UP is now offering pre-orders for my book on Fazang's metaphysics. It's due for release in May 2025. Because the book contains nearly two decades of my thinking about Fazang, a thread (if I can figure out how to do a thread!). #philsky

Fascinating use of network thinking to show the importance of freedom/liberty, as a political concept, in the Mongol empire…and well before it emerges as central to European political thought (maybe some Mongol influence on European Enlightenment?)

Let’s connect! Philosophers working on cross-cultural philosophy, decolonial theory, and World Philosophies, let us know if you want to join the pack go.bsky.app/581tzug

I’m working on a commentary for Fazang’s Essay on the Golden Lion. Crowdsourcing Q: does anyone know of Abhidharma or Madhyamaka treatises that use gold/golden objects as a metaphor for explaining metaphysical/ontological ideas? (Already have Yogācāra covered…this is for exposition of Fazang’s 教判)

In the midst of the pandemic in 2021, Pew Research Center asked 900+ tech and other experts to imagine life in 2025. Fascinating to read back through their answers today. Many predicted "greater inequality, rising authoritarianism and rampant misinformation." www.pewresearch.org/internet/202...

It's open enrollment time so here's a convenient peg to hang a little tutorial about how to choose your health insurance. Most of the advice you get is bad. Most of your instincts are bad. I however used to work for a health insurance company and I do arithmetic for a living so I can help.

Calcea Johnson and Ne’Kiya Jackson made waves in 2022 when, while still in high school, they announced a new proof of the Pythagorean theorem. They’ve now published several alternative proofs of the theorem in today’s issue of American Mathematical Monthly. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

Hey y'all, The USPS is shipping out free Covid tests again. We are in the midst of a Covid surge, so get yours today! special.usps.com/testkits

Fazang's -Essay on the Golden Lion- appears in most anthologies for Asian and/or Chinese philosophy. It's an overview of Huayan metaphysics & soteriology. I wrote this paper for those trying to teach it but uncertain about the big concepts (esp. 理/"principle" and 事/"things"). #philsky

Submitted files today for my book on Fazang's Huayan Buddhist metaphysics! Still can't believe that Oxford Univ Press offered the contract to me. So far as I know, this will be one of only a few English-language books about an individual from the Chinese Buddhist philosophical tradition. #philsky

there is another way! it’s getting traction in journalism, especially at the local/community news level it’s literally called “solutions journalism” the idea is to frame stories about problems in a useful way: how are ppl responding? is it working? what are the challenges? what’s the evidence?

Never tried to post video here so hopefully this works youtu.be/xMPrG1pds94?...

If you know a sixth former (in fulltime education 18 or younger) who enjoys philosophical writing, encourage them to submit to this essay competition. Themes: Could a machine think? Is it morally wrong to eat meat? Can I know that the world I experience is real? #philsky

After two hours of handing out candy at our local badunk-a-trunk (PTA-sponsored trunk-or-treat at Fall festival, but with a better name), I borrowed my son’s wendigo mask. Mostly the kiddos just wanted selfies…

After 15 years or so of struggling to make sense of some dense material, I’m pleased with this effort to connect Huayan Buddhism to analytic metaphysics. I challenge the idea of “the” metaphysical structure of reality. Free read-only PDF at the link. #philsky rdcu.be/dpuqM