Hong Kong "had two decades of spirited opposition politics, which took off in the final years of British colonial rule and grew into a pro-democracy coalition in the 2010s before being wiped out." hongkongfp.com/2025/11/03/h...

In case any residents of Gyeongju weren’t annoyed at the inconvenience associated with hosting APEC meetings, the authorities are blowing up people’s phones with 2-3 emergency alerts every day about traffic and facility closures.

"By controlling access, the British Government maintains a handle on the narrative of its colonial administration and on the broader history of Hong Kong." www.historyworkshop.org.uk/empire-decol...

"Questions I fielded from diplomats, scholars, journalists ... revealed how distorted the picture of the US has become. The Party’s success in sealing out Western influence has also sealed in ignorance about the American policy process and political economy." www.choosingvictory.com/p/a-proud-su...

Love this series from the Times highlighting environmental activism across all 50 states: www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

Good year to beat them at their national game

poutine for every body

Beyond how vile many of these AI images are, NGOs and charities (particularly well-funded international ones) stepping back from paying for documentary photography is a real blow to the journalists who depend on those salaries or commissions to survive: www.theguardian.com/global-devel...

"Almost no one in the US and the UK pushing for age verification laws really understands how different the internet feels when someone can see what you're doing." www.garbageday.email/p/the-great-...

"The writ also cited an incident where [Magistrate] Ho ordered Thapa to pay a HK$100 cash bail for arriving to court a minute late, and another where she called the two barristers 'good boy.' Ho made insulting remarks, hindering the two lawyers’ defence, they said." hongkongfp.com/2025/10/15/h...

"If you're ever in a financially secure position, with expertise in your field and the independence to speak out, then I urge you to contribute your wisdom to the public domain, it will enrich your life and you won't regret it" End of an era as Webb-site goes offline: webb-site.com/articles/shu...

collar gate is the latest instance of a trumped-up non-issue blossoming into a large-scale psychosis event – and possibly the dumbest. it's also the modern internet doing exactly what it was engineered to do

Baselines don't always have to shift in one direction. "there were more than 50,000 eastern Australian humpback whales in 2024. That's around 20,000 more individuals than the estimated pre-whaling population of the early 1900s." www.abc.net.au/news/science...

“We’ve sometimes grown accustomed to the heat that we gradually forget that the climate has undergone significant change. We must remind ourselves that the world’s climate is abnormal and is even becoming increasingly extreme.” www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Australia Expands Sunscreen Recalls Over False SPF Claims: www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/w...

"No real consequences of any sort have thus far come for OpenAI, and the company now seems completely disinterested in pretending that it did not train its tools on endless reams of copyrighted material." www.404media.co/openais-sora...

Saw a post by Elon Musk, which reminded me I had not donated to Wikipedia in a while.

"We have so many tech journalists, but not that much tech journalism." @edzitron.com is an oasis in the desert of AI boosterism. www.ft.com/content/4c8d...

While many foreign journalists remain barred from mainland China, at least this guy is having a nice time.

Fantastic illustrated feature by Reuters on the ongoing horrors of Myanmar's slave call centres, which exist thanks to complicity of junta, allied militias and, Reuters reports, some corrupt Thai officials: www.reuters.com/graphics/SOU...

I wrote about the Hong Kong Ghost Signs project and efforts to preserve and conserve our rapidly changing city's history: www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

"The now-defeated [same-sex partnerships] bill was the government’s attempt to meet the deadline, but only in an absolutely minimalist way." www.scmp.com/opinion/hong...

One feature The Globe’s app has that I wish others would replicate is this tab collating news alerts. Maybe I’m weird in instinctively clearing alerts on lock screen and then wishing I could have clicked them but it’d also be useful for record keeping to see what outlets alerted overnight etc.

“Labelling genetically engineered modern species as extinct ones brought back from the dead, if it takes off, it’s a huge moral hazard; a massive enabler for the activities that causes species to go extinct in the first place." www.theguardian.com/science/2025...

“The bombs are closer than ever. Every day a house next to us is hit ... there’s nowhere safe to go. We are walking hoping to reach a place that is not under fire," a refugee from Israel's latest assault tells @theglobeandmail.com's Hasan Jaber in Gaza: www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

"In 2024, 20 new US-based spyware investors were identified, bringing the total number of American backers of this technology to 31. This growth has largely outpaced other major investing countries such as Israel, Italy, and the United Kingdom." www.wired.com/story/us-spy...

A declassified version of the report obtained by The New York Times said a “majority of the group’s activity would not be classified as terrorism” under Britain’s legal definition. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/12/w...

"If the authorities had demanded lawmakers’ support for the bill, they would have had it. Some might think the vote reflects BJ’s disapproval of gay rights, or civil-society activism of any sort … this looks like a way to put the (non-NatSec) courts in their place." www.biglychee.com/2025/09/11/s...

Meta/Clegg bear huge amount of blame for shift away from principles of a free and open internet in the West. Had FB actually invested in content moderation rather than pretending to before letting AI slop flood the platform, we might be in a very different place. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

"Silver makes his case that Blueskyism is an irrelevant political sphere by, first, graphing out Google Trends data, which is a terrible way to measure anything, especially in 2025, when search traffic has fallen off a cliff. Dumb!"

Excuse the shameless self-plug, but if you want to read more about how Western firms created the Great Firewall and how Chinese companies overtook them and began exporting it overseas, I wrote a whole book about this: www.bloomsbury.com/uk/great-fir...

"Bari Weiss is on the cusp of selling her anti-woke Thought Catalog (government name: The Free Press) to Paramount [even though] inane politics aside, as a media outlet, it simply reads like a bad campus newspaper desperately out of ideas." www.deezlinks.com/p/weissian-c...

Although (or maybe because) I see many uses of AI, I really really don't like the trend of media or think tanks using AI generated images of politicians to illustrate their story. It reinforced the view that all these images and stories are fabricated.

This report focuses on a Chinese company, but worth noting the dangers the whole anti-censorship and outsourced-surveillance sector poses to the free and open internet. Just like the GFW itself, this sector was started by Western tech firms, who are now facing increased Chinese competition.

Read our new report The Internet Coup. The Great Firewall Export investigation is a joint collaboration with @amnesty.org, @papertrailmedia.de, @justiceformyanmar.org, @theglobeandmail.com, @ftm.eu, @derstandard.at and @torproject.org interseclab.org/research/the... .

Press Release 📣 Report reveals how China’s Geedge Networks and Myanmar telecoms companies are enabling the illegal junta’s digital terror campaign Read the report and press release on our website 👉🏽 buff.ly/u77rUHa #GreatFirewallExport #JusticeForMyanmar

New Research: Our investigation indicates that the Chinese company Geedge Networks is exporting mass surveillance and censorship technology to Myanmar, Pakistan, Kazakhstan and Ethiopia. #GreatFirewallExport (1/5)

As part of a consortium of researchers and journalists, I spent the better part of a year digging into leaked documents from Chinese security company Geedge, which plays a pivotal role exporting the Great Firewall around the world: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/15c699a...

Noah Smith writes that in 2021, Beijing pressured Bloomberg to get him to delete a tweet about Taiwan as part of "a list of around two dozen complaints that the company would have to address in order to secure" the release of a staff member held in China: www.noahpinion.blog/p/why-i-left...

Funnily enough this piece never mentions what exactly the author might have heard about Xinjiang pre-2019, or how he went about "fact-checking" it. But hey, he had a nice conversation with a cop. www.ecns.cn/news/cns-wir...

As China and Hong Kong mark 80th anniversary of end of WWII this week, good time to revisit this crazy story from the Battle of Hong Kong: www.theglobeandmail.com/gift/15c699a...

Both Octopus and credit card/NFC payments are far more convenient to consumers than clunky China-style QR code solutions, it's not backward to prefer them.

funny that

Surges to 0.0045% of the population from 0.004%. www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

"[More] people might have eaten vegan — if another trend hadn’t come along. That trend was avoiding ultra-processed foods. Suddenly, healthy eating came not from less meat, but from fewer additives. The meat industry exploited the idea that vegan foods were artificial." www.ft.com/content/866a...

"AI companies are stealing our content and using it to compete against us. They are strip-mining and cannibalising proprietary content and are free riding on the backs of news publishers while unlawfully enriching themselves." pressgazette.co.uk/comment-anal...

The case against Hong Kong newspaper publisher Jimmy Lai is “detached from any legal, logical, and factual basis” and rife with “Orwellian Doublespeak,” his lawyers said in a closing submission, as his marathon national security trial wrapped up this week. www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...

Judge Esther Toh, in Jimmy Lai's national security trial, says the media sought to "whip the common people into a frenzy" with reporting on Hong Kong's proposed 2019 extradition bill which prompted widespread protests that year.