so i have news. i am starting a position as an assistant professor at the graduate institute of journalism at the national taiwan university, 台大新聞所。

Tear gas is banned in international warfare, yet classified as a “riot control agent” that law enforcement can use for crowd control. “It just doesn’t work well, and it hits the weakest people the most, and causes the most complications in them,” an anesthesiology professor at Duke University said.

CNN, please don't be so dismissive of Cantonese. It is a proper language spoken by a lot of people (estimate around 80 million). This from the same CNN reporter who wrote an article blaming bamboo for the Tai Po fire. cc: @klustout.bsky.social

手空空，無一物，路遙遙，無止境。 亂離中，流浪裏，餓我體膚勞我精。 艱險我奮進，困乏我多情。 千斤擔子兩肩挑， 趁青春，結隊向前行。 珍重珍重，這是我新亞精神。 珍重珍重，這是我新亞精神。 Amidst chaos, flux, starve my body, grind my spirit. I persevere in hardship, am steadfast in adversity ... while youth lasts, we march forward together. Cherish, cherish, this is the spirit of New Asia!

@indexoncensorship.org reports: "In Hong Kong, force majeure means political pressure" tinyurl.com/5xn4c9be #HongKong #NSL #CCP #Censorship

Exiled journalism’s biggest threat is something more mundane than censorship www.niemanlab.org/2025/12/exil...

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.

Context: the #HongKong Government budgeted 77% more on promotion this year than in 2021 Legco Election.

Here's a graph for the nerds

My dad abhors any negative comments about immigrants. Asked him recently why he’s so strong on it: ‘Because we’re always happy to take the rich and clever ones. Which means it’s not about disliking immigrants. It’s about disliking the poor and vulnerable. And that’s a bad human instinct.’

A 71-year old man was arrested by national security police for posting comments suggesting the central government and Hong Kong government were the ones causing chaos, and that Beijing’s disaster assistance was merely “performative” news.rthk.hk/rthk/ch/comp...

As of 1:30pm: Turnout percentage: 15.18% (2025*) vs 14.39% (2021) Votes: 627,139 (2025*) vs 643,603 (2021) * 2025 election started 1 hour earlier and ends 1 hour later

Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU) has suspended its student union’s operations, a day after they hid a student message urging accountability for the Tai Po fire. In full: buff.ly/weCw7sD

this is authoritarianism. "Beijing's insistence that sovereignty cannot be challenged has reshaped even the vocabulary of disaster. A call for answers can be reframed as agitation. Grief can be interpreted as defiance. Volunteerism can be treated as "gathering"." www.abc.net.au/news/2025-12...

GovHK transcript of the question by AFP and the response by CE John Lee in which he is asked why he deserves to keep his job: www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/...

AFP question to Chief Executive John Lee: "Over the past few years, you have spoken about leading Hong Kong from chaos to order and from order to prosperity. And yet this prosperous society allowed 151 people to burn to death. Can you tell us why you deserve to keep your job?"

"Lee vowed to crackdown on forces that "sabotage" social unity and said anybody who dares to sabotage this commitment to society will be held to justice." When even Bloomberg puts "sabotage" in quotation marks. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

"the 'election' will reportedly proceed" tells you everything whose needs are being prioritized.

This #GivingTuesday don't forget about global, multilingual, community journalism. @globalvoices.org brings you the stories that our community members know need telling. We're under threat from authoritarianism, budget cuts, & attacks on journalists. You can help. globalvoices.org/donate/

a major factor in the fire disaster was the malfunctioning of the fire alarms. what makes me angry and sad is that the hk authories have learned nothing. what they have been doing - and now are continuing to do - is to turn off the alarm systems of society: dissent, a free press, speaking truth.

The HK Polytechnic Uni academic quoted by numerous international media outlets has 'clarified' remarks he made in Channel 4 interview in which bamboo scaffolding was highlighted as a culprit for the Tai Po fire and (falsely) claimed that mainland fire trucks were helping to fight the blaze.

state-mandated learned helplessness

As a HKer, yes this is wild. As a China reporter, this is 💯 standard. See this piece from state news agency Xinhua to understand how the recovery must unfold: “With the firm support of the Central Gov’t, the HKSAR Gov’t WILL LEAD ALL SECTORS OF SOCIETY to overcome the difficulties and move forward”

State-backed Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao has taken down an investigative report published on 28 Nov which cited industry sources saying building maintenance works effectively controlled by cartel, rife with corrupt practices in tender process, widespread cost and corner-cutting in materials.

When insecurity runs deep, everything looks like a security threat. This sort of paranoia will only deepen public resentment and distaste towards the Hong Kong government and its Beijing Overlord.

The HK authorities arrested a student on sedition charges because he made a petition asking the government to 1) ensure accommodation for displaced residents; 2) setup independent investigation; 3) review construction supervision system 4) probe regulatory neglect. hongkongfp.com/2025/11/30/h...

Columbia and Northwestern are the academic homes to the most prestigious journalism schools in the country and they are the two universities that caved to the Trump administration’s extortion demands that are directly connected to the First Amendment. Just gonna sit with that for a while.

“Blaming the bamboo scaffolding is probably very stupid on the part of the government,” said Tsang. “It will create the impression that the government is trying to distract attention rather than confront the real issue of what really caused the fire.” www.washingtonpost.com/world/2025/1...

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.

This 2024 post from the DAB’s Peggy Wong is quickly becoming infamous. In it, the pro-Beijing district councillor dismisses fire safety concerns about the Wang Fuk work as malicious rumours misleading the public, and accuses the Democratic Party of “provocatively live-streaming “ from the scene.

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.

Join us tomorrow at 9:30 am EST.

powerful piece. how, in hong kong, silence can be deafening. "Even laughter feels different now." www.dw.com/en/hong-kong...

This is fantastic. I just enabled this on Signal Desktop, under Settings --> Chats.

Bellingcat’s contact email has always been a magnet for people with fairly unusual views; paranoid delusions, sprawling conspiracies, the works. But recently, the pattern has shifted, we’re seeing more and more emails clearly written with ChatGPT.

cloudflare seems to have global issues. www.cloudflarestatus.com

Asia Spotlight is live! 🌏 This new series from our Young Writers Committee @youngwriterspen.bsky.social features voices from Bangladesh, Singapore, Thailand, and more, exploring censorship and resilience through personal reflections. Read the full overview ⬇️ tomorrowclub.world/spotlights/s...

Who can take advantage of the DSA’s protections for researchers? Daphne Keller considers three categories: academics who receive access to internal platform data, the broader class of researchers who may use publicly available data, and researchers whose data collection is not covered by the DSA.

China's Cyberspace Administration (CAC) announced on September 22 the launch of a two-month campaign to curb content that incites antagonism and violence, and amplifies pessimistic and negative sentiments.

You may have heard about UK ministers' plan to double to 10 years the time needed to reached settled status in the UK. But did you realise that it threatened access to pensions for the 180,000 people who came from Hong Kong on the UK government's visa scheme? My dispatch: www.ft.com/content/8b91...

PSA: we're aware that Signal is down for some people. This appears to be related to a major AWS outage. Stand by.

how dutch parties vote on china issues

i want to believe this was done on purpose. 😄🙃

“The FCC will continue to safeguard America’s networks against penetration from foreign adversaries, like China.” I guess for the FCC there is not much difference between Hong Kong Telecom and China Telecom at this point. www.cnbc.com/2025/10/16/u...

This great investigation by @jacksapoch.bsky.social is more evidence of the capability and willingness by the Israeli military to widely use sophisticated manipulations to advance communication objectives. What we showed last week with PRISONBREAK is a piece of a much bigger influence puzzle.

Last week, a Dutch court ordered Meta to give Facebook & Instagram users the right to set a chronological feed by default - one of the first EU cases applying the DSA in civil proceedings. To unpack what this means, I spoke with @bitsoffreedom.bsky.social: www.techpolicy.press/what-a-dutch...

1/ NEW REPORT: “We Say You Want a Revolution” - An AI-Enabled Influence Operation Aimed at Overthrowing the Iranian Regime. We call it PRISONBREAK. Keep reading to find out why. THREAD 🧵

imagine being responsible for free expression at one of these companies. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

New: ICE has bought a tool that tracks the locations of hundreds of millions of phones globally, updates every single day. Usually harvested from apps and advertising www.404media.co/ice-to-buy-t...