A resignation letter: "We all saw it. We all saw, with our own two eyes, people getting dragged like dogs and killed. But we could not write one line about it on the newspaper. In shame, we put down our pens. May 20, 1980 All Journalists of Jeonnam Maeil Shinmun"

Each Carnegie Medal finalist was asked by @ala-booklist.bsky.social to share a brief reading list. Here's mine:

For a @motherjones.com article, I am looking to speak to caregivers of disabled individuals who are 14 and older who are on Medicaid re Medicaid work requirement exemptions. My email to reach out is [email protected] and reposts are appreciated.

Today marks the beginning of "Lesser Cold" #小寒 in the lunisolar #microseason for the chilliest period of the year (小寒大寒，滴水成冰). More precisely, we are in Lesser Cold's first pentad, "When Wild Geese Fly Northward" #雁北鄉. [Detail from 芦雁図 Reeds and Geese, 鉄舟徳済 Tesshū Tokusai, 1343 @metmuseum.org]

What museum-worthy fine art were you making at eight and a half months old?🎨🐣

We’re looking for an experienced newsroom leader with a track record of producing and editing impactful, community-centered journalism. If that sounds like you, apply to be our next editor in chief: buff.ly/jKsWWgE

We’re kicking off the new year with some good news: Thanks to 114 readers like you, we raised $31,804 during our year-end campaign! We’re ready to tell the stories that need to be told in 2026. Thank you for your investment in The Xylom! 🎉 Missed the party? Help us start the year strong below:

六年前的今天， #李文亮 医生遭武汉市公安局武昌分局中南路街派出所警察训诫。

“And now let us believe in a long year that is given to us, new, untouched, full of things that have never been…” Rainer Maria Rilke, in a letter to his wife, the sculptor Clara Rilke, on January 1, 1907 (Translated by Jane Bannard Greene and M.D. Herter Norton) #everynightapoem #january

#Caturday 🐱: Min Zhen 閔貞 (China, 1730–after 1791) Black #Cat (n.d.; Qing dynasty, 18th c.) Hanging scroll; ink on paper Painting: 78.5 x 38.5 cm. (30 7/8 x 15 3/16 in.) Princeton University Art Museum y1947-65 artmuseum.princeton.edu/art/collecti... #CatsInArt #ChineseArt

Potato chip flavors on sale for the Hong Kong market. A thread 🧵 Steamed Garlic Shrimp

For many, the end of the year is an opportunity to catch up on reading or to purchase books as gifts. In 2025, a number of authors joined the Tech Policy Press podcast, providing fresh insights into how technology interacts with people, politics, and power. Check out the list:

Pleased to share the Spring 2026 schedule for the SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY IN ASIA online seminar series @ Harvard! Talks are over Zoom on Tuesdays, 10:30–11:45 am EST. REGISTRATION: seow.scholars.harvard.edu/STinAsia #histstm #histsci #histtech #histmed #envhist #envhum #sts 🧪

An Amusing Wooden Automaton That Types a Courteous Email on Computer Keyboard When Cranked laughingsquid.com/courtesy-ema...

Waymo has halted service in San Francisco after numerous videos & images showed its autonomous cars snarling traffic during the blackout. With traffic lights down, Waymos across the city stopped dead in their tracks at intersections. missionlocal.org/2025/12/sf-w...

Behold: the first-ever list of news outlets that have banned generative AI in their reporting. As of today, this is literally information that you cannot find on Google. My goal is to fill the starter pack, so please send over suggestions with supporting evidence! go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

CDT Quote of the Week: chinadigitaltimes.net/2025/12/vide...

In preparation for @thebulletin.org's anniversary issue this month I went through the archives to review our past climate coverage and found a LOT of gems. We couldn't include all of them in the timeline so going to share some of them here.

2024's word of the year was 'enshittification' was and 2025's is 'slop'. Either next year the word is something like 'encrusted' or we figure out a way to bury the garbage or use it as fuel for something more productive

"This promise of an AI future, is really just a collective anxiety that wealthy people have about how well they're gonna be able to control us in the future." - @tressiemcphd.bsky.social with an absolute mic drop moment about AI bullshit. Incredible words. Listen to all of it!

The best China books of 2025, across nonfiction and literature, as selected by experts and the editors. Read the full list: chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/18/b...

Got a good snow pun? Enter it in Chicago’s fourth annual “name a snowplow” contest. https://to.wttw.com/4j3Q3i9

Identity issues. Migrant stories. Company profiles. Lost daughters. Daddy issues. The 2025 edition of our annual year-end round-up of notable China books in both nonfiction and literature, nominated by experts and the editors, is here. Read the full list: chinabooksreview.com/2025/12/18/b...

What a time to decide to learn less about the world. dailytarheel.com/article/univ...

I'm making a starter pack of Generative AI slop-free newsrooms that you can donate and support. Obvious good eggs include @404media.co and @thexylom.com (which I founded). Drop your suggestions below and provide evidence; this has gone too far and I'm losing my mind

Our members at @propublicaguild.org are fighting to protect their journalism and their jobs while @propublica.org management wants the right to replace our members and post slop content with no labels. Readers deserve better and so do our members! #NewsNotSlop

I first encountered Zheng Xiaoqiong's words in Iron Moon, a poetry collection by Chinese migrant workers. I read from her poem "Assembly Line" to close out a recent episode of 开门见山 | Gateway to Global China, a podcast I host @madeinchinajournal.com, on labor and (de)industrialization in East Asia🎙️:

"'I had to leave!' A whole generation of rural youngsters felt this yearning." So grateful for this essay by Zheng Xiaoqiong in @equatormag.bsky.social (tr. Eleanor Goodman) on the aspirations, disillusionment, and perseverance of fellow migrant workers whose labor powered China's industrial rise👇

"'I had to leave!' A whole generation of rural youngsters felt this yearning." So grateful for this essay by Zheng Xiaoqiong in @equatormag.bsky.social (tr. Eleanor Goodman) on the aspirations, disillusionment, and perseverance of fellow migrant workers whose labor powered China's industrial rise👇

One HK man Simon told me he’s here to support Lai and his wife, but he’s not optimistic about the verdict. He and a friend are carrying bright red apples, to represent the Apple Daily newspaper which Lai founded, and which was forced to close by authorities.

Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai has been found guilty of collusion and sedition in his national security trial. In full: buff.ly/x1KrXiO

Physics Today magazine is the leading publication in the physical sciences community and they are looking for a science editor with a background in physics. #physicsjobs #sciencejournalism workforcenow.adp.com/mascsr/defau...

In late 2020 a Chinese man called Guan Heng travelled to Xinjiang with our BuzzFeed map of detention facilities to provide ground truth for our work - he provided the first corroborating evidence for many sites. He escaped to the US - then ICE detained him. www.wsj.com/world/china/...

🚨 𝐂𝐅𝐏 𝐀𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐭: 𝐋𝐚𝐛𝐨𝐫 & 𝐀𝐈 𝐒𝐲𝐦𝐩𝐨𝐬𝐢𝐮𝐦 𝐚𝐭 𝐘𝐚𝐥𝐞 Theme: Workers Building, Using, and Resisting AI 📅 Date: April 29, 2026 📍 Loc: Yale University (In-person) 💰 Funding: Scholarships available for grad students & organizers! 𝐃𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐞: Jan 18, 2026 Submit here: indl-na.sciencesconf.org

When the AI boom began, copywriters were singled out as one of the jobs most vulnerable to AI. Now, three years later, I wanted to hear from workers on the frontlines of the industry, to hear what had actually taken place on the ground. For many, it was even worse than they'd feared.

When the Hong Kong fire occurred, initial international media coverage focused on bamboo scaffolding. This Orientalised and exoticised the tragedy, obscuring the fact that it was not just an accident, but an outcome shaped by long-term neglect and inequality, writes @tingguowrites.bsky.social.

Christine Choy, a pioneering Asian-American documentary filmmaker, died December 7 at age 73. Choy was one of the first Asian-American women nominated for the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature.

Incredible book, if you haven’t seen it. I think about the “technologically precocious boy” all the time.

The postal service is not a business, measuring it by revenue is the wrong frame for understanding its worth.

It appears that pretty much all Hong Kong-based newsfluencers, even those with international bylines or appearances, got a memo within the last 12 hours that they should shut up about the deadly fire, or else face consequences. Related: the city's "Patriots-only" legislature has elections Sunday

Last call for sign-ups! Our Writing Across Borders workshop with @yangyangcheng.bsky.social will take place THIS Saturday, Dec 6 from 12:00 PM-1:45 PM EST. Join us for a series of writing exercises and a Q&A with Yangyang afterwards. Click the link below to reserve your spot. luma.com/tj9dmkbo

"Often struggles against colonialism seem impossible, but at some point something changes and there's a space for seemingly impossible struggles to win." @jwassers.bsky.social talks about THE MILK TEA ALLIANCE with @madeinchinajournal.com 🎧⤵️ madeinchinajournal.com/2025/11/24/e...

Just starting, workshop day beginning at Stanford, celebrating the rediscovery & new home of the typewriter the incredibly versatile Lin Yutang invented —talks to come by @tsmullaney.bsky.social Yangyang Cheng & Emma Teng et al

Hong Kongers express their solidarity with the victims of the Tai Po fire by writing words of encouragement and sympathy on Post-It notes. An act that disappeared since 2019 but apparently remain unforgotten since then.

International media, you can do better than this. "Bamboo" is maybe exotic and a compelling hook but it is too easy. The real story here is the growing culture of corruption, including a lack of accountability and oversight, that enabled a chain of human errors that led to this disaster.

Pope Leo XIV told students not to use artificial intelligence for homework, saying that AI ‘won’t stand in authentic wonder before the beauty of God’s creation.’

Great to get to talk about Hong Kong in 2019 & after with Ching Kwan Lee, author of the important new @harvardpress.bsky.social book Forever Hong Kong, podcast moderated expertly by @yangyangcheng.bsky.social for @madeinchinajournal.com madeinchinajournal.com/2025/11/24/e...

|| NEW EPISODE || Six years after Hong Kong’s mass protests, @yangyangcheng.bsky.social talks with sociologist Ching Kwan Lee and historian @jwassers.bsky.social about the struggle’s enduring significance, its transnational afterlives, and what it teaches us amid today’s democratic backsliding.

Nominate up to three titles for the 2025 Baifang Schell Book Prize: chinabooksreview.com/2025/11/06/p... Last year the jury selected at the "Edge of Empire" by Edward Wong as the winner in Nonfiction and "Taiwan Travelogue" by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ (author) and Lin King (translator) in Literature.

Check out @nuvoices.bsky.social virtual writing workshop: Writing Across Borders with essayist and academic @yangyangcheng.bsky.social! This workshop will examine the limitations of the dominant discourse on China, and discuss how to write against and beyond state-centric frameworks.