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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

Favorite footnote written? Not sure, but I thought this one was decent, writing on some parallels between fictional regimes and real ones.

A passage listing many features of totalitarian regimes with many footnotes. The key line is:

[in totalitarian regimes,] thuggery and mob violence might be secretly orchestrated by the Party-state

The footnote:
As happens in the PRC (Ong 2018), but secret police forces the world over blur the boundary between unidentified thugs and law enforcement agents.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 14/05/2026

I must say it's not every day I get to see AI™ slop in Mandarin on this site.

‪Post by likely bot or scam account ‪@liusiyuan1220212.bsky.social‬ featuring a generated image of a piece of "calligraphy" with numerous nonsensical Chinese "characters" and the following block of emoji-peppered, overwrought text:

沉浸在笔墨书香之中，满心沉静治愈。
逐一试写各式毛笔，狐狸毛小楷质感绝佳💡
笔触轻盈柔韧，落笔有劲，书写手感极佳。
将古典雅致的传统韵味悄悄珍藏。
于笔墨之间，感受中式美学的独特魅力✨
#文字之力 #文房雅物 #中式慢生活 #书法爱好者 #传统文化

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 05/05/2026

May the Fourth be with you all! By which I mean (obviously) the May Fourth Movement, in which a public who'd had a brief taste of not living under imperial rule became quite adamant that they didn't want a repeat of living under imperial rule.

A black-and-white landscape photo of university students (estimated 3,000 in total) protesting in Tiananmen Square (but in 1919).

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

A good observation overall, albeit one that somewhat unfairly displaces blame from another autocratic gulf state that owns multiple propagandistic news outlets

Screenshot of a Bluesky post by @danielsohn.bsky.social that areads:

Everything is an adversarial psy-op, except for the networks literally co-owned by various autocratic Gulf states

This post quotes another post that shares an veritably insane "foreign interference" ramble from a Fox News segment.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 09/04/2026

Hey, it sounds like this one guy has some principled reservations about AI™ as a tool for writers.

A screencap of an excerpt from the letter from the editor in the 2026 spring edition of WordWorks:

We invited our contributors to interpret "tools" as broadly as possible—and they responded with a landslide of suggestions. Whether you're looking for a few low-tech ideas to jumpstart your creativity or the right digital solution to help you organize a book-length manuscript, you're sure to find something useful in these pages.

But even the best tools are limited by the skill of the person wielding them, which is why several of our contributors offer resources for developing our own voices and creative abilities rather than relying on external tools. This in turn brings us to Al, the most controversial tool of all. Eric de Roulet argues that the "cognitive offloading" Al offers is dangerous, that writers who care about their craft need to consciously hone and nurture their writing brains. Avis Blackbird offers an additional perspective: since Al is already in many writers' toolboxes, we have a responsibility to set intentional boundaries around its use to protect our artform—both for ourselves and for the next generation writers.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 02/04/2026

"I'm definitely not an agent of the state, here's my extensive stash of porn as proof, no wait lemme delete that real quick" definitely has to be up there.

Screencap of a screencap of a tweet. China affairs commentator (I'm putting it lightly) Dai Weiwei writes, "maybe I dress like one, but I don't work for a Chinese embassy or a state-affiliated media. To prove that, I will show you my collection of porn movie. Lol."

Dai's tweet was deleted at the time the screenshot was taken, but there were 121 quote tweets on it, one of these being Joshua Dummer writing "If you delete the tweet where you share your weird porn collection, everyone has to forget about it."

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 11/03/2026

I was listening to some early 2000s rock (neurotically) this evening, and I can't say I was expecting to stumble upon this whatsoever.

Freeze-frame from the music video for "What About Now" by Chris Daughtry, possibly the first American Idol to touch a guitar. Curiously, the video, highlighting an almost eclectic range of social and political issues we should be concerned about, includes a few frames of footage from the tank man incident at Tiananmen Square, captioned "between right and WRONG'

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

(I've said it before, but the late 2025 issue of @speculativeinsight.bsky.social is chock full of essays on empire. Mine is far from the only one.)

Cover of the late 2025 edition of Speculative Insight (paperback), a drawing featuring several trees growing in a starry, cloudy pink-violet dreamscape.

Opening lines of my essay "Lives Under Empire" in the aforementioned collection.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 15/01/2026

Happened upon this quote (middle of page) from "The Weight of What Is Hollow" in One Message Remains by @premeemohamed.com. Hoo boy, has this hit hard again. Doesn't matter that I'm the one quoting the story.

A page from the essay quoting the story "The Weight of What Is Hollow" in the collection One Message Remains by Premee Mohamed. The quote, narrated by a relatively privileged subject of an imperialist, totalitarian regime is as follows:

Was it normal, did other people feel this way, did every subject of every empire go to sleep at night thinking I am afraid of the people who run my country, did they think I fear my state?

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

For once, reading the news was a good way to start my morning.

Excerpts from the article in the quoted post:

“I told everybody: ‘I’m retired, I sit home all day. If we get any reports of ICE in the neighborhood, somebody text me, and I’ll run over on my scooter and go yell at them.’”

“A lot of people are worried about being under the spotlight of this regime,” Grambo told me. “I figure I’m already in their spotlight.”

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 08/10/2025

One of my favorite comedic forms, as seen in @zeteo.com zeteo.com/p/trump-hegs...

Excerpt from the linked article:

So far, the effort to intimidate leakers is not going well. Inside the government, staffers and leakers have responded to the crackdown with defiance, three Defense Department staffers and two other sources familiar with the situation tell Zeteo. Put another way, those staffers and sources were immediately compelled to leak their thoughts and other details to a media outlet.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

Oh, and they're seeking a PhD student for the Sinofantasy project as well.

A PhD candidate posting for the same research project (see previous post):

PhD Candidate (m/f/d)
<2 Wochen
Teilzeit
Ausbildung

The Department of Chinese Studies is looking for a PhD Candidate (m/f/d)

Bewerbungsfrist: 21. Oktober 2025
Veröffentlichungsdatum: 5. September 2025
Eintrittstermin: 1. Januar 2026
Arbeitsumfang: Part-time position (60 %)
Kennziffer: 00004514

Beschreibung

Subproject: “SINOFANTASY – Escapism in contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction”

The ERC-funded project SINOFANTASY (Starting Grant #101220119, PI Jun.-Prof. Dr. Jessica Imbach) investigates the rise and impact of contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction,

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 03/10/2025

This is easily the coolest postdoc posting I've seen in a while, but it's a bit outside my wheelhouse and my dissertation timeline. The University ot Freiburg (universität-freiburg) is seeking a researcher on contemporary Chinese fantasy fiction and then some. uni-freiburg.de/stellenangeb...

Screencap of a post-doc job ad (for a German university, but they're taking applications in English):

Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d)

The Department of Chinese Studies is looking for a Postdoctoral Researcher (m/f/d)

Bewerbungsfrist: 21 October 2025
Eintrittstermin: 01. Januar 2026
Arbeitsumfang: Part-time position (70 %)

Subproject: “SINOFANTASY – Fantasy fiction across the Chinese mediasphere (platforms, creative labor, fandom, participatory culture, transmediality)”

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 16/09/2025

I must say this bit feels a bit rich, given all the ink spilled by State-side nat-sec institutes over technology transfers and such.

Excerpt from the article quoted in the original post:

Beijing had expressed concern about a U.S.-controlled entity using technology that TikTok’s parent developed in China, in particular the algorithm that decides which videos to recommend.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 14/09/2025

Encountered in Vancouver: brand new (well, to me) way to describe gulab jamun.

Dessert section of a Nepali restaurant's menu, featuring gulab jamun described as a "Nepali Timbit"

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

Going from a PhD (and possibly one or two post-docs) to tenure-track is still treated as the default, as I've seen and heard, yet the odds were stacked against us before many of us ever got started.

Excerpt from the article linked in the original post:

Reality and the Data to Back It Up

Over the last few decades, the landscape of career options for Ph.D.s—no matter the discipline—has changed quite dramatically. For much of the 20th century, most Ph.D. recipients both expected and went mainly into tenure-track faculty roles in academia. In the latter half of the century, though, for a variety of complex reasons spanning better economic prospects, globalization and more, the numbers of doctoral recipients increased greatly; from 1958 to 1998, the number of doctoral recipients in the States quintupled.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

The US leadership's contempt for the humanities drips into everything, unceasingly.

MEC: Thanks again for taking the time to answer my questions, Matt. Can you tell #AsiaNow readers what you’re working on, or thinking about, next?

MHS: Thank you, it has been a pleasure! I have been on sabbatical this past year (2024-25), funded in part by an NEH grant that was terminated on April 3rd by the Trump administration. I’ve been trying to finish a book that I’ve been working on in the background for the past 30 years: its working title is Male Same-Sex Relations and Masculinity in Qing Dynasty China.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

The more things change, the more they etc., etc.

Another excerpt:

Broadly speaking, there are two main ways that societies have approached the phenomenon of transgender: demonization and sacralization. We find both paradigms in Qing dynasty China. Demonization is exemplified by the approach of Qing law, which could imagine only one plausible reason “for a male to masquerade in female attire”: namely, to insinuate himself into female space in order to seduce or rape the “chaste wives and daughters” cloistered therein. This scenario bears close resemblance to the paranoid fantasy so common in transphobic circles today, that transwomen in particular are dangerous male predators in disguise who seek to penetrate female space (women’s restrooms, sports teams, etc.) for some nefarious purpose.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 27/08/2025

I especially liked this reminder that there's a distinction to be made between a country's governance model (democratic republic, absolute monarchy, whatever) and the reach of its governance.

Excerpt from the interview:

As readers of my other books know, I am deeply skeptical about the reach of the imperial state and about the extent to which elite ideology and lifestyle had any purchase on ordinary people. The vast majority of people in Qing dynasty China were illiterate peasants engaged in subsistence family farming who rarely if ever encountered officials or any other members of the elite.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 06/08/2025

It's pretty incredible to me that the AHA's statement on using generative AI in education rather decisively notes this fundamental problem with the technology, but nonetheless goes on to say that generative AI "can be a valuable partner in the classroom."

An excerpted subheading from the AHA statement on the use of generative AI in education:

II. Generative AI and Its Limitations

AI produces texts, images, audio, and video, not truths.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 04/07/2025

The Siege of Gondor, Part I: Professionals Talk Logistics

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 06/06/2025

Had already caught a whiff of back-of-the-cigarette-packet anti-smoking ad aesthetics from the first poster, and yes, those aesthetics are very much being mobilized against AI™ here.

Another poster in the style of the first (see original post), but this emphasizes the colonially exploitative features of the "AI" industry.

A third poster of the same sort, but depicting a diseased-looking brain and warning that "AI" causes brain rot.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Again, he packed well for his travels. I also kinda dig the robe. (Sorry, picture quality not great due to glare.) @dieworkwear.bsky.social Rate Hu Shih's fit if you want

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

This was basically the same thing as a baby Aspirin, right

A half-full glass flask of brandy leaned against its leather carrying pouch, all of this inside a museum display case. The placard notes that this was Hu Shih's remedy in case of a heart attack.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Looking forward to translating/finding a translation of this letter and seeing what sorts of advice people offered for a trip from China to the UK in the 1920s.

Dated January 8, 1920, a letter (in Chinese) from student Fu Ssu-nien to Professor Hu Shih offering travel advice for a trip to England.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

The man was well-traveled and well-equipped for travel.

A museum glass box display of Hu Shih's toiletries, including a very large brush(?) with a circular head, in a large suitcase.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 22/05/2025

Got to visit the Hu Shih Memorial Hall 胡適紀念館 and the nearby memorial park today.

The Hu Shih Memorial Hall, asingle-story complex of buildings with two-sloped roofs, orange-ish brick and white and blue facades, half-hodden behind trees. One building elsewhere in the complex (not pictured) was Hu Shih's residence in Taipei for four or so years (as I recall from my visit today).

A memorial bust statue of Hu Shih 胡適 at the top of a flight of stone stairs, surrounded by subtropical trees and other plants.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

This seems like a more nuanced take than what's been put out there recently about the problems with cheating, generative AI, and higher education.

Excerpt from the article in the quoted post:

I wrote about "academic honesty" last week, and I really don't feel like rehashing that essay here. Cluely and its founders have already received way too much air-time. But I will say this: I don't think that the availability of a new technology – ChatGPT or similar – explains everything that's happening; nor does "cheating."

Indeed, I think what we are facing is as much a cultural and social problem as it is a technological one. Students' utter disengagement with college (hashtag not all students) stems from a variety of factors, both within and well beyond education policy and practice: the incessant standardized testing in K-12 (and the curricular changes that this has wrought – less art, music, and PE, and no recess, for example); a frenzied emphasis on learning outcomes, not on the process of learning; blah blah blah screens/social media; a decline (in and out of the classroom) in reading fiction and reading for pleasure (the decline in parents reading out loud); students' experiences during the pandemic; shifting narratives about the instrumental value of higher education – it's all job skills or nothin'; the increasing cost of college, alongside an insistence that everyone must attain a college degree; growing economic inequality, hyper-competition, and the fears – rightly so, it seems – that there are no good jobs, even for those college graduates; there is no future – so why bother?!

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 09/05/2025

Reading this bit about the current hiring feud at the University of Florida, and it sure seems like there's a lot of Leninist-style institutional capture going on in that state.

More text from the article:

Ideology has regularly trumped experience in recent Florida presidential hires. Multiple former lawmakers, all Republicans, are at the helm of various state institutions. They include former lieutenant governor Jeanette Nuñez at Florida International University, Adam Hasner at Florida Atlantic University and Richard Corcoran at New College of Florida, among others.

Considering those recent hiring trends, Ono is an outlier—a traditional higher ed candidate in a state where Republican governor Ron DeSantis and the Florida Board of Governors, most of whom he appoints, have taken active roles in presidential searches.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

Nearly forgot to post this today. May the Fourth be with you, i.e., happy anniversary of the May Fourth Movement to those who celebrate

From Wikipedia: A black-and-white photo of approximately 3,000 Chinese student protestors demonstrating against the Treaty of Versailles (May 4, 1919) in Tiananmen Square.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 03/05/2025

TaiwanPlus is hosting a series of classic Taiwanese films on their site, free to watch, for at least the next several weeks. 🎥 www.taiwanplus.com/the-pursuit-...

Screencap of the TaiwanPlus website, showcasing the films Growing Up 小畢的故事 (1983) and 光陰的故事.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 23/04/2025

Cats reporting in, apparently as distractions from The Resistance™

Di Di (brown tabby cat, left) and Dou Dou (house panther, right) look up with wide, yellow-green eyes, their attention enraptured by some trinket held out-of-frame by the photographer.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 19/04/2025

A good case study of how an aspiring autocrat can use (sometimes manufactured) political chaos to suppress the opposition and consolidate their power. This bit especially stood out to me.

Excerpt from the News About Turkey article in the quoted post:

Silence and Anticipation: How the Elite Knows What’s Coming

One telling aspect of this march toward full autocracy is the conspicuous silence – or at least measured restraint – of much of Turkey’s elite as these events unfold. Within the halls of power, the boardrooms of big business, and even among segments of the opposition, there is a palpable sense of anticipation. It is as if many key players know what is coming and have resigned themselves to it, or are carefully positioning themselves to survive it. The reaction (or lack thereof) to the İmamoğlu saga speaks volumes. Outside of İmamoğlu’s immediate allies and a segment of opposition voters, there has been no massive elite revolt or unified outcry against the obvious injustices taking place. Influential business figures, who might privately disagree with destabilizing the country’s politics, remain muted, likely calculating that open criticism would jeopardize their enterprises under an increasingly authoritarian regime. Even within Erdoğan’s AKP and its nationalist partners, any dissenting voices are rare to nonexistent – a testament to the climate of fear that has been cultivated.

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Not the remake of a classic I was expecting, but:

A classic November 10, 2020 tweet by @DeanBrowningPA:

I'm a black gay guy and I can personally say that Obama did nothing for me, my life only changed a little bit and it was for the worse. Everything is so much better under Trump though. I feel respected - which I never do when democrats are involved.

(Aside from sounding like it was written by a chatbot promoted to conduct election disinformation despite having been written in November 2020, the tweet is also evidently written by a white person and was readily being dunked on at the time the screenshot was taken, with 40 quote tweets and two likes.)

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Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 14/04/2025

Much like the current US admin's view of tariffs-as-policy, their understanding of Chinese manufacturing also seems to be stuck in the past. Good piece of insight from @elifriedman.bsky.social, interviewed for this Wired article.

From the linked Wired article:

Heading: The Myth of Cheap Prices

Cost is undeniably an important reason why businesses choose to source from China. But experts say it’s incorrect to assume that lower prices mean lower quality, and the reason manufacturing in China is cheaper than other regions doesn’t always have to do with how much workers are paid. In fact, lower wages have become a less important aspect of China’s manufacturing strength as the country has moved up the value chain, says Eli Friedman, an associate professor studying China’s labor force at Cornell University.

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