One of my favorite poems since childhood, and a poem I share every #autumnequinox. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”

So what are we thinking, a 70-30 balance?

"This country is full of maniacs with guns who shoot people for all kinds of crazy reasons" — a long text message from my friend Cleo Rose-Innes (like me, not born in the U.S.), copied in this 🧵:

“Do I want the Silicon Valley people to win? Probably not.” He wants, he said, the most ethical version of AI to win. www.theguardian.com/news/ng-inte...

Ich bin jetzt seit bald zwei Monaten in China, und ich bin fasziniert wie "weit weg" das Land von Europa doch immer noch ist. Ein Beispiel: @watson.ch publiziert einen Artikel über angebliche "selbstschiessende" Autos. Darin stimmt eigentlich nichts. www.watson.ch/internationa...

Get ready for a bunch of media interviews with traumatized South Koreans workers once they all return home, about how they were treated by the U.S. and ICE.

Europe’s summer from hell bleeds into autumn as Trump and Xi turn the screws My piece looking at how China's flex of military muscle and diplomatic clout is going down in Europe

No question

My prediction is that someday fairly soon we will wake up to find Chinese astronauts walking on the Moon, and the entire country will absolutely freak out about falling behind in space.

Important piece from @davidautor.bsky.social & Gordon Hanson about the next "China shock" and how to deal with it. #EconSky www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/o...

Important to keep an eye on what is occurring in Thailand at present

#Trump’s #tariffs on #China aren’t a simple “win” or "loss" for American trade policy—they have a multifaceted impact on China, affecting its economy and preferred political narrative in ways many might not expect. A brief 🧵: 1/11

Maroussia Lévesque uses the term “analog privilege” to describe how the wealthy avoid being subject to & penalized by algorithmic decision making models. You know what rich people also do? Send their kids to private schools where they have low student-to-teacher ratios & aren’t forced to use GenAI.

Stell dir vor, der Präsident des wirtschaftlich und politisch mächtigsten Landes der Welt ändert jeden Tag seine Meinung, oft sogar mehrmals am Tag. Dann müssten die Tageszeitungen einen Ticker nur für die Furz-Ideen dieses Präsidenten einrichten. Stell dir das einmal vor. #Trump

All praise for @chinadigitaltimes.net aside, let me say that it makes me absolutely f-cking furious that they have to put their bowl out for $10K. It's a sum that is absolutely inconsequential in comparison to the value CDT provides. It's 1/4 year kindergarten tuition at a Beijing int'l school.

NEW: A ChinaFile investigation into China's powerful, but leaky, internet censorship system at locknet.chinafile.com 1/21

The owner of Twitter sends out 100 right wing propaganda tweets every single day and the algorithm is set up so that every single person on Twitter has to see every single one of these tweets. Now here’s another piece about Blue Sky’s ideological diversity problem.

THREAD: “When Mr. Trump imposed his tariffs in the first term, President Xi Jinping retaliated with some restraint and sent a delegation to negotiate a trade deal.” www.wsj.com/opinion/fran...

I wonder which chapter of Art of the Deal covers begging, lol www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

1/4. On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.

This is how Kaganovich talked about Stalin.

Don’t overthink this. He’s asking for bribes.

These EOs are just slightly longer social media posts from a deranged mind.

I used to envy my colleagues who work on human rights issues in the US, because they have intellectually sophisticated arguments to make, unlike those of us who work on China — the CCP is often violating rights in the most unambiguous way, there isn’t much to“argue.” Welcome to the club, US folks!

Ich: arbeite seit 15 Jahren zum Faschismusbegriff, schreibe Bücher, halte Vorträge, bin auf Fachkonferenzen, bin up to date mit der gesamten Fachliteratur, Gesprächspartnerin für Medien. Random man: Also eigentlich verwendest du den Faschismusbegriff nicht richtig, lass mich ihn dir erklären ☝️

MYANMAR EARTHQUAKE What we know: - 7.7 scale quake, 10 km deep recorded in Mandalay, Myanmar at ~ 13.20pm BK time - felt in Thailand as far as Bangkok, buildings swaying - images and footage of damage What we don’t know: - extend of damages - no. of casualties

the feminine urge to

Man, journalism was easy in Tintin’s day!

🧵THREAD: Why did Thailand's parliament fail to even meet to reform the constitution this week? As usual, it's complicated and not only about law but also political ****housery between factions. But above all, it's a legacy of the last military coup. A break down of a breakdown.

Young men voted Republican at the highest level in 20 years because of YouTube brainwashing by right wing podcasters. And no one with money gives a shit about it. I wish people like me could get through somehow to the donors www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

There have been many articles in which journalists mull over the allegedly „mysterious“ world view people like Musk and Thiel hold. There’s nothing mysterious about it. They endorse a fascist, techno-authoritarian, anti-democratic world view, which is deeply misogynistic and racist. That’s it.

Theravada Buddhism has acknowledged a huge range of sex/gender identities for millennia. Some truly amazing options in the canon. It was only in the ‘30s/40s, in thrall to the West, that Thai politicians tried to binarize gender. The binary was a contempo capitalist thing, a tool for the state.

There is no better UK critic of non-fiction than @yuanyiz.bsky.social, whose reviews are always worth reading. This is a very good review of a book that is very much worth your time, even though as Yuan says, it's not a particularly enjoyable read:

#Indonesia's elections are massive. 204 million people are voting in two days. The last rallies were on Saturday and filled stadiums. The current frontrunner is Prabowo Subianto.

NIEMAND WILL MEHR ARBEITEN!!!!!

Taiwan has a premier who is an epidemiologist and an incoming president who is a former physician with an MPH. Taiwan is also effectively excluded from the WHO.

Eure Einschätzung bitte: Sollte ich mir einen Linkedin-Account machen und dort Essays und Aphorismen veröffentlichen?

once you notice a LOT of people in romantic and/or sexual relationships see themselves as superior to single/celibate people, it's hard to unsee.

stop treating romantic relationships as superior challenge. people who've been "in love" are not inherently better.

Wenn man jahrelang im Transitland festsitzt. Mein Beitrag im #SRFecho zu den Uiguren, die gegen ihren Willen noch immer in Thailand festgehalten werden. www.srf.ch/play/radio/r...

This is also (one of) my points about the whole asinine “marketplace of ideas” argument. Nazis don’t change their minds and go away when they lose arguments, Hitler didn’t even go away when he lost an *election*. Nothing they do is in good faith; in fact, asymmetrical good faith is their strategy.

It’s like breaking up with someone and then getting upset when they change their Netflix password

rip 🕯️ www.theverge.com/c/23972308/t...

Elon Musk has for some reason decided to declare war on the entire union-based political culture of Sweden, where Tesla has a factory, and indeed of all of Scandinavia. “Tesla battle with Swedish unions spreads to Denmark” on.ft.com/3Nc05PA

This, from @davekarpf.bsky.social, gets at something about the inconsistencies in tech billionaires’ selective disruption-fantasies: dudes like Elon recast as allegedly easily triggered snowflakes people who just… don’t (have reason to) give them money or attention. open.substack.com/pub/davekarp...

Single shrimps from China for sale in a Lao supermarket in Xayaburi Province. 3000 Kip. Illuminated by a beautiful, dust-filtered evening sun.

Anyway. If guys are suddenly very lonely it's probably worth asking what they expected by following the advice of influencers who tell them to be maximally selfish, and who sneer at thoughtfulness, kindness, generosity, and genuine courtesy as weakness and wokeness