Some people are thrown into existential dread from their car breaking down. Some people lose their mind if their phone dies. Me, I poured soup into my keyboard. Shio ramen, sweet potatoes, celery. Thai-English mechanical, lit letters.

Sometimes, Charlie Brown, dead is better.

The problem is distributing free pdfs of the readings for groups of senior faculty, or for grad seminars, as if there was someone else who was buying the books, while "we" get them for free. When "we" don't buy the books, there isn't anyone else to pick up the cost of publishing them.

Autocorrect has become our worst enema.

MOUNTAINHEAD (Armstrong, 2025)

Oh. So this is what wrecked my reading group.

"All major game studios are using generative AI" the fact this is a lie aside, the ones that are using it aren't doing so willingly. It's meddling managers and CEOs with no understanding or attachment to game development forcing it on devs who end up not using anything it outputs anyway.

trust is neither given nor earned. it forms naturally between people who share the experience of having listened to Skinny Puppy at or after 3 am in the dark by themselves

At least 500,000 dead and that many more imprisoned by Soeharto though the number could be much higher. This was a genocide of right-wing militarism enabled by the US, UK, other Western powers and fostered by the political climate of the Cold War. Not a hero.

« On ne sait même plus qui est mort. La dernière fois, j’ai appris par hasard qu’un collègue était décédé depuis quatre mois. Avant, je l’aurais su dans La Tribune. » Quand la presse locale disparaît... larevuedesmedias.ina.fr/presse-quoti...

Q: "How was writing Blackbeard for #Civ7?" A: I got to put the below in the game.

It has seven chambers, each with its own color, and in the center a great ebony clock.

This is beautiful-looking exhibition about my favorite neighborhood in Bangkok!

“And for what? A cankerous glut of racist memes and cardboard essays. Not only is the ratio of AI’s resource rapacity to its productive utility indefensibly and irremediably skewed, AI-made material is itself a waste product: flimsy, shoddy, disposable, a single-use plastic of the mind.”

POV you’re still not married and your grandparents just found the nicest boy with a good job they want you to meet

This quiz is terrible: The subtext is “we cannot know from demographic or three data points someone’s political choice” But we already knew that. And the data presented is often misleading. So stop giving uninformative surveys if they don’t predict behavior.

#Auntgate is still deeply annoying. But linguistically interesting. There are some languages (esp Chinese languages) where kinship terms are very specific - mother’s older sister is different from mother’s younger sister is different from father’s sister.

Gaming stuff: Crusader Kings 3’s “All Under Heaven” is out now. I helped consult for historical accuracy and design on its representation of medieval Southeast Asia (and Siberia). Check it out! A fantastic expansion for a fantastic game. www.paradoxinteractive.com/games/crusad...

Also this. Students pick up about 20% of what you say, and question 80% of what you say (in other words, they’re very quick to critique a whole lot of stuff that nobody said).

This is a frustrating nothing issue - in Thai, at least, and in so many other languages, “aunt” (ป้า) means “someone I am familiar with who is around my mother’s age.” CERTAINLY your dad’s cousin. Me, I’m getting to uncle (ลุง) age and don’t feel great about it.

Not to mention the football coach. I saw an ad for a faculty position in the NY area for $60k/yr. A typical applicant would be in their 30s or 40s and have debt from living on a grad student stipend for a decade or so.

The Klamath River runs through the heart of Yurok life. For decades, the community fought to free it — and in 2024, they won. I spoke with Yurok Tribal attorney Amy Bowers Cordalis about what it means to restore a river, a people, and a way of life in my latest conversation for @thenation.com.

It has been one of the great parts of my career to work with new liberal arts schools - seeing students thrive with deep thought, careful reading, and individual attention. But these have been in Asia. In the US, we are turning our back on the liberal arts. www.nytimes.com/2025/10/22/o...

Duke press sale! 50% off books including my own Mekong Dreaming!

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people. #NoKings

New event! 📆23rd Oct 🕛12:15 Eastern time Cornell University South east Asia program hold in person talk "Sleepless Dreams: Fictional Narrative as a Form of Resistance in Thailand" w/ Anocha Suwichakornpong www.nysean.org/events/sleep...

Documentary on the life of blueberry pickers in Europe

Crusader Kings III has a new expansion covering Asia, and I'm happy to have had a part in bringing historical Southeast Asia (and parts of Siberia) to life!

Hi #Portfolioday l! I'm Emma Kidwell, an award nominated writer and designer experienced in indie and AAA. I've worked in all stages of game development from polish to pitching. I'm adaptable, quick to learn, and available for full time and contact work ✍️ ✨ emmkid.info

Write the book you would like to see someone pull from a higgledy piggledy pile in a secondhand shop 63 years after your death and say, "This looks fucking weird. I think I will buy it for Joan."

Today, I’m reading Pekka Hämäläinen’s “Indigenous Continent,” a fantastic story of the colonization of North America that deals with indigenous states and societies that often exerted a good deal of power over the European colonies. A really good read. wwnorton.com/books/978163...

My ivory tower, tweed-clad, Ivy-educated self has just gotten another royalty check. This one can buy me: 4 sandwiches. 1 nice dinner (without wine, dessert, or appetizer). 3 pints of beer. (But not all three).

“The new smashing pumpkins” is now 30 years old.

We are thrilled to announce that our NEW Large Language Model will be released on 11.18.25.

There is no salvaging, no "other side" to Wounded Knee. It is an example of "we told our soldiers lies to frighten them / they did atrocity because of their fear / we gave them medals to convince everyone they acted rightly." Let's think about how that might play out today.

Thai Lawyers for human rights have kicked off their "Class of 2020" interview series in which they talk to young people from the 2020 protest movement about their reflections. This one is with a student from Bad Student, who now lives in Vancouver.

Find the kind of friend who will do a fascism to avoid talking about (his involvement in) your crimes.

I will look at your dog as you pass by where I’m sitting, maybe whisper “hey buddy”, get ready for a head scratch. I will not apologize for this.

Anything to keep from saying the name “Epstein.”

Twitter simply became useless to me. I use social media to get information on other projects and books and to promote my own writing. I don’t want parasocial or irrelevant stuff. I go to Twitter now and it’s either Nazi stuff or videos of horrible accidents. It has no more value.

entire press has gotten bullied into treating charlie kirk as if he was one of the most important americans alive and not a modestly popular podcaster

Water leaks in library, contingent faculty, hiring freezes, no research support. And a top-ranked football team.

it's true

When I lived along Jones Falls, we had osprey and water snakes, deer along the banks. Jones Falls is an urban gem.

The AI summary (I think Gemini) of my book, Mekong Dreaming, describes it as a novel of escape from Laos (“the land of death”) to Thailand (“the land of life”) to realize “the dream.” Absolutely bizarre. Like fully fever dream riffing on the title.

SPEAKER ANNOUNCEMENT 📢 Emma Kidwell - Writer 💚 Get a deeper understanding of the games media to #gamedev pipeline, the successes, and the deterioration 💙What new writers and narrative designers should do now to kickstart their career now that the pipeline no longer exists. #GDoCExpo2025

For those who missed this wonderful event and discussion, it's now available in YouTube form! www.youtube.com/live/blXnnwc... 🗃️

Americans are not exceptions. We can learn from how democracy, violence, and public demonization of political enemies led to the end of democracies elsewhere.

I use Huntington sometimes in class to highlight “when famous people are allowed to talk completely out of their ass”. Mongolia + Thailand China + Vietnam (For extra points his map of “the free world” is also a hoot, as most of the countries in there are dictatorships).