"Perhaps I just live an amazingly uncomplicated life ... but I can assure you that making reminders for myself and scheduling my calendar and like, organizing my screenshots is not the massive time suck your average AI guy on X thinks it is." www.deezlinks.com/p/the-ai-fou...

the AI founders’ utterly unimaginative use cases

Also, might you be brave enough to run The Atlantic Book Club?

deezlinks.com

Great old ad I found in a 1931 edition of the New York Times:

China "is becoming more willing to be seen," by tourists who will be easily impressed and won't look too hard. At same time Beijing is introducing visa-free travel for many, it's also expelling foreign journalists and heavily restricting those that remain. www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

FCCC report points to growing pressure beyond China’s long-established political red lines. Almost half of respondents said new topics had become more sensitive over the past year, including the economy, demographics, trade tensions and emerging technologies. drive.google.com/file/d/1H9z8...

Wong "has been in custody since November 2020 and was previously expected to be released as early as 2027." www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Hong Kong activist Joshua Wong expected to plead guilty in foreign collusion case

High Court has scheduled a plea and sentencing hearing for the 29-year-old jailed activist on September 2.

scmp.com

If you're doing research, never underestimate how incredibly helpful and generous with their time librarians and archivists are. Basically any time I've reached out to an archive with a query about their collection (that's cost-prohibitive to go check in person) they always go beyond what I expect.

RIP Victor Mair, a giant of Chinese language studies. Beyond his academic writings, his blog, Language Log, became a vital source of discussion on Chinese and other languages, and he was posting right up until the end. languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=73799

Die Zeit also pulls this crap. Surprised this behaviour has not been regulated out of existence in the EU, is clearly predatory, hoping people won't bother or will put off and forget and keep being charged.

James Griffiths@jamestgriffiths.com · 3mo ago

Why is it newspapers seem to be holdouts in making it overly difficult to cancel subscriptions, or stop auto-renewing trials? This approach is incredibly scammy and almost all users must have enough experience with other subscription services to know it's not for any technical reasons.

Alien Tort Statute aside, Cisco's complicity in building Great Firewall and enabling the targeting of FLG activists in China is undeniable. While Cisco was eventually supplanted by Chinese competitors, Golden Shield could not have got off the ground without it. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

US supreme court ends lawsuit alleging Cisco helped China pursue Falun Gong

Suit ⁠alleged California-based company developed technology that allowed China to surveil members of movement

theguardian.com

Starmer may resign as Labour leader and therefore Prime Minister, but he cannot resign as a member of parliament, but must be sacked by appointment to the Chiltern Hundreds, per a law from 1623. www.hansardsociety.org.uk/publications...

Right, it’s terrifying to consider the possibility of kids not reporting groomers and abusers if they’re afraid THEY will get in trouble for defying age verification laws.

Zendervai@zendervai.bsky.social · 2mo ago

I think the thing that's standing out to me is that like...groomers aren't nearly as common as they're made out to be, but even if they were, "hey kid, tell anyone and you'll get in trouble for breaking the law" is one fucking amazing way to guarantee kids will hide it.

Rats, trench toilets, and brothers-in-arms dying beside you. The war for Ukraine has now lasted longer than the First World War. And for all that’s changed, some things about trench warfare are grimly familiar. My report from the Kharkiv region, with photos by @olgaivashchenko.bsky.social

Ukraine’s fight is longer than the First World War, and looks similar in the trenches

In Ukraine, more than a century after the First World War, men are still fighting and dying in muddy holes in the ground

theglobeandmail.com

“Mr. Xi was visibly more relaxed than when he hosted Mr. Trump. The two men shook hands and smiled warmly, and at one point Mr. Xi appeared to laugh at a comment by his guest, as Mr. Putin greeted other top Chinese officials with visible familiarity.” From our @jamestgriffiths.com

Putin and Xi deepen ties as Russian leader follows Trump to China

Putin visits at a time of relative weakness, more dependent than ever on Chinese economic support

theglobeandmail.com

"In February, the Chinese government expelled NYT correspondent Vivian Wang ... one of two remaining Times correspondents in China until this year ... The WSJ will soon be down to one foreign correspondent. The Post has not had a reporter in China since 2022." www.thewirechina.com/2026/05/10/n...

No Country for American Reporters - The Wire China

The number of journalists working for U.S. news organizations in China is dwindling fast, making it ever harder for outsiders to get a full picture of what is happening on the ground.

thewirechina.com

"A ... federal judge has dismissed a writer's lawsuit accusing a bestselling fiction author of stealing her romance-fantasy book drafts to create the popular 'Crave' series, issuing a lengthy opinion finding tropes of the genre —such as 'hot, sexy, dangerous boys'— are not protected by copyright."

6,000 Pages Of Romantasy Later, Judge Sinks Author's IP Suit - Law360

A New York federal judge has dismissed a writer's lawsuit accusing a bestselling fiction author of stealing her romance-fantasy book drafts to create the popular "Crave" series, issuing a lengthy opin...

law360.com

lmao, somehow, one of the biggest grifters in media returned www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/bus...

Neither did European air travellers...? www.ft.com/content/4004...

Have always appreciated NYT's detailed bylines (especially when they go into process, interviewed X number of people, reviewed Y documents etc.) but I wish they'd do similar for photographers, especially when a piece has such a distinctive visual style like this one: www.nytimes.com/2026/04/26/w...

In the Foothills of Mount Fuji, the Fight Is On Against Unruly Tourists

nytimes.com

This, by @reckless.bsky.social, is superb. "Not everything is a business. Not everything is a loop! The entire human experience cannot be captured in a database. That’s the limit of software brain. That’s why people hate AI. It flattens them." www.theverge.com/podcast/9170...

BEWARE SOFTWARE BRAIN

Software brain is changing the world, but most people still aren’t buying.

theverge.com

Reached a point where one of the most tangible features of One Country, Two Systems will now be that as you enter Hong Kong from China, using a vape in public becomes illegal. (Smoking regular cigarettes still fine per HKSAR government.) www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Hong Kong boosts e-cigarette ban awareness in mainland China before ‘golden week’

Authorities ramp up promotion and enforcement before public possession ban on alternative smoking products begins on April 30.

scmp.com

Why is it newspapers seem to be holdouts in making it overly difficult to cancel subscriptions, or stop auto-renewing trials? This approach is incredibly scammy and almost all users must have enough experience with other subscription services to know it's not for any technical reasons.

"For all that’s been written about the coming AI crash, very little has been written about the short-form video collapse that is clearly just over the horizon." www.garbageday.email/p/what-happe...

Four days of persistently bad air pollution, with AQI above 100, including while Hong Kong hosting Rugby Sevens, with hundreds of thousands of tourists in town, and zero coverage of the problem in local media. Nor does HKO monitor or alert high AQI, far more harmful than mildly cold or hot temps.

I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"

Anand Gopal already wrote one of the best narrative non-fiction books in No Good Men Among the Living, but Days of Love and Rage is a staggering, awe-inspiring piece of journalism, a beautiful, tragic portrait of the Syrian revolution everyone should read: www.plutobooks.com/product/days...

Days of Love and Rage - Pluto Press

From Pulitzer and National Book Award finalist Anand Gopal, an epic and enthralling account of six Syrians fighting for a better world

plutobooks.com

samuel beckett was born on this day 120 years ago. astonishing to think that if he had survived, and could run 100m in 9.57 seconds, he would be not only the oldest but also the fastest man in the world - together with his nobel prize for literature, an astonishing trifecta

(a) Putonghua widely used in HK schools already, with most public schools teaching Chinese via Putonghua, despite dubious pedagogical justification. (a) This would cause rapid decline of Cantonese, as in Guangdong and severely undermine the language's future viability. www.ft.com/content/1de8...

This is so grim. What's the point of mass producing slop for a subscription-driven publication? This is something that would have been useful in a previous era of media, when you could have flooded Google with AI stories (as slop sites continue to do) and made ad revenue. Today, worthless.

World's Freest Economy™ will fine you HK$3,000 for having a vape, but cigarettes are fine. And don't worry, tourists can pay their fines electronically. www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...

Two years ago, @hongkongfp.com did this great piece on how Hong Kong govt thwarts own stated goal of getting press to "tell good Hong Kong stories" by stonewalling media outlets, especially independent and foreign media, even on completely uncontroversial stories: hongkongfp.com/2024/01/23/h...

How Hong Kong denies media access despite calls for "good stories"

Hong Kong government departments denied multiple interview requests from HKFP despite officials' calls to tell "good stories" of the city.

hongkongfp.com