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samuelwa.de
@samuelwa.de
2.8K followers 1K following 1.2K posts
Vancouver-based editor at @chinadigitaltimes.net, a Berkeley-based nonprofit publishing news and translation about human rights and censorship in China.

Knows changes aren't permanent, but change is. Will stand on the ocean until I start sinking.
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samuelwa.de
My dude, the UK's domestic emissions peaked in 1972.
First world countries like Australia, the USA & UK are increasing their carbon emissions each year but China reached a peak in 2024. The result? Polling by US-based polling organisations like the Pew Research Center & Harvard University show that 87% -95% of people in China like their govt.
November 11, 2025 at 7:47 AM
samuelwa.de
Tempting.
After half a lifetime battling the forces of oppression, he'd spent the second half revenging himself on a world that had fucked up anyway. London Rules Mick Herron
November 10, 2025 at 10:30 PM
samuelwa.de
If you see this, post an album cover with a motor vehicle on it
Loyle Carner’s hugo: reimagined — a red car crushed into a cuboid, sitting on a green surface with a parental advisory label in the lower right corner
November 8, 2025 at 6:25 PM
samuelwa.de
OTOH, “effective” *might* rescue VV here, but also, 1992 was a while ago. And it’s fiction. (Very, very good fiction.)
The OOB's computer was a lot dumber than it had been in the Middle Beyond. She couldn't ask it to sift through the messages looking for nuance and insight. In fact, if an incoming message didn't have a Triskweline text, it was often unreadable. The ship's translator programs still worked fairly well with the major trade languages, but even there the translation was slow and full of alternative meanings and jabberwocky. It was just another sign that they were approaching the Bottom of the Beyond. Effective translation of natural languages comes awfully close to requiring a sentient translator program. The Zones of Thought Series Vernor Vinge
November 7, 2025 at 4:20 PM
samuelwa.de
This is so obvious when you think about it, and so not until you do.
the difference between visible light and invisible light is purely biological: Waves in an Impossible Sea Matt Strassler
November 7, 2025 at 4:02 PM
samuelwa.de
@nickharkaway.com onto something here (2017)
She's never comfortable with that "I"_ not because she thinks it augurs some sort of awakening, but because she knows it does not. The Chinese room is empty. There is no god in the machine, just a very sophisticated card index. It should not pretend to experience. Gnomon Nick Harkaway
November 7, 2025 at 3:58 PM
samuelwa.de
#protoblogging
Lu Xun favored short essays because they could be written quickly and thus respond with urgency to the social and political issues of the day. Many of his essays were first published in literary journals and newspapers before being anthologized, and their appeal lay in their spontaneity, immediacy, and intimacy. Written in the moment, they convey, with emotion, personal reactions to external events: the death of a friend, a suicide, a massacre. Lu Xun described his essays as "signs of the times" (shidai de meimu), 12 contemporary chronicles of the fleeting and ephemeral events of history as they transpired; they give literary substance to a historical moment, making it immediate, tangible, and relevant to his readership. Jottings Under Lamplight Lu Xun, Eileen J. Cheng, and Kirk A Denton
November 7, 2025 at 3:56 PM
samuelwa.de
I never looked at Ground News before because I think the emphasis on left vs right is fundamentally misguided, but this is amazing: grouping @hrw.org and @hongkongfp.com together with Xinhua and China Daily as “the left,” then generating summaries muddling their perspectives even further. Sublime.
HKFP “leans left”; HRW is “left”. Excerpt from HKFP: UK university caved to China pressure over Xinjiang forced labour research, professor says A UK university halted research into forced labour in China following pressure from Beijing, a professor who has spearheaded the work and successfully fought the move said Monday. Sheffield Hallam University. Photo: Sheffield Hallam University, via Facebook. Laura Murphy, recognised globally for her academic work on contemporary slavery, hired human rights lawyers to fight Sheffield Hallam University's decision to curtail her research and forced... Xinhua (“left”): Xinhua Commentary: Xinjiang advances modernization with unwavering determination China Daily (“Lean Left”): How UK university's reports spread Western propaganda on Xinjiang. The series of Xinjiang reports, produced by the Helena Kennedy Centre of Sheffield Hallam University, are some of the latest in … AI summary of coverage trends: • Left-Leaning outlets frame China's actions as "pressure" halting "forced labour research" or "Uyghur Oppression," emphasizing human rights and academic freedom. • Conversely, right-leaning coverage generalizes this to a "China problem" for "British universities," focusing on broader threats to "free inquiry and free expression. • The left employs terms like "Threatens" and "Oppression," even presenting China's view of "Western propaganda" and "shoddy researches," while the right uses "problem" and "threat" to describe CCP "influence. • Center-Leaning reports use "intimidated" and "ditch," but uniquely highlight the university's apology for restricting "academic freedom. • A key divergence is the left and centre focus on specific university details versus the right’s generalized critique.
November 6, 2025 at 2:29 AM
samuelwa.de
ha
NYT screenshot: BRET STEPHENS Do Dumb Ideas Ever Die? 🤡 4 MIN READ
November 5, 2025 at 3:21 AM
samuelwa.de
*What is he talking about?!* This could be straight from the intro to Getting Things Done (2001). You could probably find something pretty similar in cuneiform.
Cal Newport quote from Slow Productivity: "We are overworked and overstressed, constantly dissatisfied, and reaching for a bar that keeps rising higher and higher," writes Celeste Headlee in the introduction to Do Nothing. A few years earlier, this sentiment might have seemed provocative. By the time the pandemic peaked, however, she was preaching to the choir.
November 3, 2025 at 8:36 AM
samuelwa.de
wait what
Star Trek: The Next Generation listed under Award Winners in Netflix search results for Taiwanese
November 2, 2025 at 9:57 AM
samuelwa.de
e.g., here: go to album, shuffle, play, play, play, shuffle
Apple Music pinned music widget: The Necks’ Disquiet album, Mastodon Essentials playlist, Prince’s Dirty Mind album, Blawan’s SickElixir album, Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief Live Recordings 2003-09 album, Jack DeJohnette Essentials playlist
October 31, 2025 at 10:52 PM
samuelwa.de
Still my best (2020)
Hello Kitty jack-o’-lantern, horns instead of ears, Batman logo instead of bow. The most ambitious crossover event in history? Maybe, maybe not.
October 31, 2025 at 6:44 PM
samuelwa.de
Come for the zesty array of censorship evasion techniques, stay for the tiny thumbnail of an “I Took Part In The Reciprocal Tariff War of April, 2025 And All I Got Was This Lousy Mug” mug.
tiny thumbnail of an “I Took Part In The Reciprocal Tariff War of April, 2025 And All I Got Was This Lousy Mug” mug. I have taken minor liberties with that translation.
October 31, 2025 at 3:59 PM
samuelwa.de
Finally visited Britannia Mine Museum after driving past it for years on the way up to Whistler and Squamish. Recommended. Looks big from outside, but enormous from within.
White industrial shed climbing the side of a mountain like giant steps, with vast windows everywhere. Trees off to the side. Rocks, moss, oxidised copper Rock Heavily aged wooden doors
October 30, 2025 at 9:40 PM
samuelwa.de
Cavernous interior of an ore processing shed which covers half a mountainside in giant steps between Vancouver and Whistler. Raw rock covered with moss and oxidised mineral deposits visible between concrete supports, with wood and metal superstructure high above. Steampunk industrial Batman cathedral vibe. Cavernous interior of an ore processing shed which covers half a mountainside in giant steps between Vancouver and Whistler. Giant pipes, some kind of shed within the shed, the roof extending upward into the distance. Cavernous interior of an ore processing shed which covers half a mountainside in giant steps between Vancouver and Whistler. Light blazing in through the acres of windows. Cavernous interior of an ore processing shed which covers half a mountainside in giant steps between Vancouver and Whistler. More light blazing in over giant pipes.
October 30, 2025 at 9:36 PM
samuelwa.de
I’m glad you’re having fun, guys, but there are certain combinations of headwear design and accessorisation that I might be inclined to avoid.
A man in a purple robe and very tall, pointy hat … well, it extends down the back of his head, so maybe more of a hood … and a skull mask, smashing an iPad with a rock.
October 30, 2025 at 8:55 PM
samuelwa.de
But how do I control ovens one to three? #bilinguisme
Temperature dial for "OVEN FOUR" (bilingual English/French)
October 28, 2025 at 8:41 PM
samuelwa.de
Quote from Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams: "Mark steps in more and more. Mark decides to block a video of the aftermath of a Mexican school shooting when the president of Mexico reaches out to him personally; he blocks some Indonesian political speech threatening a coup against his buddy President Jokowi; he blocks political speech that the South Korean National Election Commission wants removed. Most of those decisions are contrary to the Community Standards. The ones we've made public. He's replacing the process we've developed over years with whatever he thinks is right. And there doesn't seem to be any form of accountability. It's also hard not to notice that in nearly every case, his decision happens to coincide with his business interests, mollifying governments so he can keep Facebook growing."
October 28, 2025 at 7:08 PM
samuelwa.de
Quote from Zero History by William Gibson "She'd yet to see a book in any Bigendian environment. He was a creature of screens, of bare expanses of desk or table, empty shelves. He owned, as far as she knew, no art. In some way, she suspected, he regarded it as competition, noise to his signal."
October 28, 2025 at 7:08 PM
samuelwa.de
This has never happened to me, but it sounds bad.
Quote from @matthewdgreen.bsky.social in Tracers in the Dark by @agreenberg.bsky.social "The privacy is not there," he said. "You know like, you're buying an ice cream cone, and then it turns out not to be an ice cream cone but the exact opposite of an ice cream cone? That's how I think about Bitcoin."
October 27, 2025 at 3:51 PM
samuelwa.de
“authors [in China] are expected to act much like a cloud-bursting machine, banishing shadows rather than seeking them out.” From The Subplot, by Megan Walsh
October 25, 2025 at 5:39 PM
samuelwa.de
The Extant Wolf-Like Canids would be a great name for a terrible band. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackal#...
Linked diagram of phylogenetic relationships between the extant wolf-like clade of canids based on mitochondrial DNA.
October 21, 2025 at 8:11 PM
samuelwa.de
Simpsons meme. Sideshow Bob sits in court, having just explained that his "DIE BART DIE" tattoo is actually German for "THE BART THE". Juror says, laughing, "No one who speaks German can be an evil man."
October 21, 2025 at 7:01 PM
samuelwa.de
I hope there's a confirmation pop-up after that "Close All," because I am definitely going to hit it accidentally at some point.

(Admittedly, that might be for the best.)
Safari iOS pop-up menu: "Close All 337 Tabs | Close Tab" right next to each other.
October 16, 2025 at 4:15 AM