iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Inside Higher Ed @insidehighered.com · 7h

DHS Appeals Block on International Student Time Limits bit.ly/4dpY5jP

Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin, a white man with brown hair and a beard, speaks during a press conference at the Javits Center on July 1, 2026, in New York City.

012

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

sadly the huge leaps forward in machine translation are likely to deprive us of such reliable gems as "dry" and "fuck" in Chinese using the same simplified character or my all-time favorite "Racist Park" (which was also an accurate description of the park, as it happened)

24631120

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

"Ethnic Minorities Park" is basically 'what if Disney's 'It's a Small World After All' was an entire theme park, full of govt propaganda, and even more offensive.'

922916

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Hari Kunzru @harikunzru.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Listening to the racist podcast about the “Indian Question” and wow mediocre 2026 white guys jealous of an Indian with a tech job is very much the new mediocre Central Valley white guys in 1941 jealous of Japanese with a thriving farm.

8729151

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Brian Hioe @brianhioe.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I thought this was quite a useful read, a good counter argument to those who think that the ROC military during the KMT era is some model for today when it was rife with graft and rewarded sycophants to dictators rather than innovation or ability

163

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I wrote an essay for Speculative Insight a year ago (though it feels like three or four). They're a fine venue for writing at the intersection of social commentary and literary commentary, so seriously consider supporting them! www.speculativeinsight.com/essays/lives...

speculativeinsight.com

Lives under empire — Speculative Insight

Eric de Roulet explores how Premee Mohamed's fiction depicts the experience of living under a totalitarian regime, and how it reflects real-world experiences.

112

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Speculative Insight journal @speculativeinsight.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

This year SI is participating in AusArt Day, raising funds to completely cover paying our authors at a higher rate for (at least) Jan-June 2027. Feel like supporting us? Click the link to send some money... and tell your friends! artists.australianculturalfund.org.au/s/project/a2...

134

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Don Moynihan @donmoyn.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Pretty impressive data viz

741695

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Scary Mr. Olmec Man @scarymrolmecman.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

One of the worst pieces of advice I got for my dissertation was to write it with the book in mind. One of the best was to think of the dissertation as a database that stores ideas, readings, materials you can draw on forthe rest of your career

0456

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Frankie Huang 黄碧赤 @ourobororoboruo.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

“Students told us the temptation was greatest when they feared they would miss a deadline,” the report reads. IMO the underlying issue here is the labor practices these students are being fed into as they near adulthood. Learning is not about volume of output, but do these students understand that?

16881306

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Niao Collective @niaocollective.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

The real question is - short crust or flaky crust

6216

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Sharon 🪳🌹 @sharonk.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

For those interested in learning more about Qing history (unfortunately, I think we can rule the above user out, I will post a couple of links about Qing civilization w/r/t internal/external behavior): www.cambridge.org/core/books/a...

cambridge.org

The Qing Extermination of the Zünghars (Chapter 12) - The Cambridge World History of Genocide

The Cambridge World History of Genocide - May 2023

1532

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

So, where this sort of 'real talk' falls a bit short for me is that this 'glut' coexists with the easily observable fact that most departments have more than their share of indifferent teachers, mediocre researchers and straight-up abusers, protected by the social rules of the tenure track.

730829

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

"All at once, Canada tried to get rid of the people it had spent so many years courting." Sometimes I just wish shame was a more powerful political force macleans.ca/longforms/i-...

All at once, Canada tried to get rid of the people it had spent so many years courting. It cut permanent residency spots by 20 per cent—from 500,000 to 395,000—and would further reduce the target over the next two years. It closed immigration pathways for caregivers and agriculture workers. The three-year post-graduation work permit, which I had, used to be open to all graduates of Canadian post-secondary institutions; now it’s only available to those who finished university and specific college programs.

The Canadian Border Services Agency, or CBSA, has ramped up removals like never before. It sent more than 23,000 people home in 2025 and aims to oust 40,000 over the next two years. In March, Ottawa passed legislation that denied refugee hearings to certain asylum seekers, making them easier to deport. Altogether, Canada expects more than a million people to leave every year. And the Immigration Red Wedding is working. The country’s population declined for the first time in 2025, largely because there were fewer non-permanent residents.

I was next on the chopping block. Nearly 1.4 million work permits were set to expire in 2026, including mine in October. I couldn’t believe the government had the gall to double-cross people who’d planned their lives around immigration. I was livid: I’d done absolutely nothing wrong, yet my future was in limbo. I’d lived my entire adult life in Canada. To go would mean to leave my job, my professional contacts, my friends and my partner. It would mean starting over in a country where I hadn’t lived for almost a decade. And it might mean giving up my career; journalists in the Philippines regularly face persecution, legal harassment and physical violence. I’d have to move back in with my parents because, even if I worked as an editor back home, I would only be earning around $600 a month. All the freedoms I took for granted would be erased. I couldn’t imagine reaching, much less exceeding, my potential there.

0183

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

elia ayoub @ayoub.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Canada better be careful to not repeat the same mistakes. So far it seems like that's precisely what's happening under the new (anti)-immigration rules. macleans.ca/longforms/i-...

macleans.ca

I Wanted to Stay in Canada. So I Learned French. - Macleans.ca

Under the new immigration rules, I had to become a francophone in one year.

3246

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

At least the commentators in question used to have a go at China analysis for a good while, even if they mislearned a lot along the way. Now, it seems, it's just staff writers falling for shiny authoritarianism and otherwise parroting the shallowest mainstream opinions.

000

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Shuster's piece, which this New Bloom article comments on, sure does stink of a common phenomenon in the field in which mediocre China analysts pivot to trying their hand at Taiwan analysis, demonstrating how little they understand either subject.

110

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.

164

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Brendan O’Kane @bokane.org · 08/09/2026

not sure about greatest but it’s probably the one I most enjoyed writing

footnote on the word 熱趕郎: ‘The iconoclastic philosopher Li Zhi 李贄, who died in 1602 after cutting his own throat to make a point, used it in the same sense around the same time, in a posthumously published book of essays whose title (續焚書) I can only translate as Burn This Book Too.’

416934

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Simple Sabotage Field Manual @simple-sabotage.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.

062

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Pwnallthethings @pwnallthethings.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

America and Asia are on course for a collision. Not talking about geopolitics here. 200-300 million years from now the two landmasses will literally collide, having squashed and eventually eliminated the Pacific Ocean between them

41795

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Academic freedom does not demand the humoring of cranks. It does demand the countenancing of unpopular ideas, but you need to be able to sustain a decent argument in favor of those ideas, with evidence.

330946

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Yeah, so as the 'academic freedom is important and in the past there has existed a from-the-left chilling effect on campuses'...this ain't that. UGhent is saying this guy just didn't do the work he was hired to do and instead was doing turbo-racism and...yeah, that's gonna get him fired. Buh-bye.

191120172

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Michael Turton @michaelturton.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

Fascinating post from one of the most interesting Taiwan history blogs. This one on Koxinga's sister, Ursola de Bargas danshuihistory.blogspot.com/2010/12/koxi...

danshuihistory.blogspot.com

Koxinga's sister (Part 1): Ursola de Bargas

[Koxinga's birthplace in 平戶Hirado in Nagasaki - known as 兒誕石] According to the writing of Franciscan missionary to China, Fr Antonio de Sant...

044

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Mary Dudziak @marydudziak.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Beginning my research seminar, as always, with Lynn Hunt's essay How Writing Leads to Thinking (and Not the Other Way Around). Should be mandatory reading in light of the impact of AI. www.historians.org/perspectives...

Writing is stressful. Sitting in my computer chair my neck and shoulder muscles almost immediately tense up as I dig around in my brain for the best phrase or even any coherent string of words, whether I am writing an essay like this one, a book chapter, a letter of recommendation, or an email message to a friend. Writing is time-consuming. It’s a great way to pass the time on a long airplane flight because you lose track of the passage of time altogether. It’s even better, from that point of view exclusively, than watching an episode of Mad Men on your laptop. Writing means many different things to me but one thing it is not: writing is not the transcription of thoughts already consciously present in my mind. Writing is a magical and mysterious process that makes it possible to think differently.

9479153

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

eileen chengyin chow @chowleen.bsky.social · 26/06/2025

Rather beautifully, Professor Mahmood Mamdani's dedication in "Neither Settler Nor Native" is to his trail-blazing son, @zohrankmamdani.bsky.social. He quotes the revolutionary Chinese writer Lu Xun's famous concluding lines in "Hometown": 「其實地上本沒有路，走的人多了，也便成了路。」 -魯迅，故鄉 #everynightapoem

For Zohran,
You teach us how to engage the world in difficult times. May you inspire many and blaze a trail!
It’s like a path across the land—it’s not there to begin with, but when lots of people go the same way, it comes into being.
—Lu Hsun, “Hometown”

From the dedication page of Mamdani, Mahmood, "Neither Settler nor Native : The Making and Unmaking of Permanent Minorities," Harvard University Press, 2020

7604180

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Alice Camp @acampwriting.com · 16/08/2026

the people's mayor is out here distinguishing j/zh and pronouncing yue correctly and you haven't even started chinese 101... get it together.

0163

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

YOUR PROSTATE IS HUGE THAT MEANS YOU NEED TO HAVE IT EXAMINED @terminal7.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

When you can only speak one sentence in Chinese:

The mayor says “I don’t know Chinese” menacingly.

1905

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

YOUR PROSTATE IS HUGE THAT MEANS YOU NEED TO HAVE IT EXAMINED @terminal7.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

but you try anyway:

The mayor says “but I want to give it a try (to speak mandarin)”, again, menacingly.

2876

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 16/08/2026

He opens with "I don't know Mandarin, but I'm going to give it a shot" right after introducing himself, so I'm guessing the former even if that's tongue-in-cheek. Still, his pronunciation would pass a speaking exam for an intro-level college course at the very least.

1230

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 16/08/2026

演出现场见! on.nyc.gov/broadway

1124637672

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

re: the latest hyperbole with respect to what's going on at universities, this essay on the news media's construction of the campus as a site of conflict and insecurity feels apt.

parapraxismagazine.com

The Campus Does Not Exist — Parapraxis

How campus war is made Samuel P. Catlin

000

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I really can't get over this, this is such a wild example. there was a whole Church Inquisition torturing and extorting suspected heretics in Newton's day and we are being invited to ask whether he would have survived land acknowledgments lmfao bsky.app/profile/pwhi...

541510269

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

And which is more serious: 1) A silly campus protest 2) Someone said a mean thing Leftishly 3) Armed agents of the state murdering people 4) A political party using the state to silence dissent. (3) and (4) are very obviously a much bigger deal than (1) or (2), not that you can tell from the NYT.

566088

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

Junior academics, obviously, are threatened by everything that moves. A non-exhaustive list includes assorted humans, legislative bills, and the lines on charts and graphs presented at upper admin meetings

000

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

What an excerpt. Do academics have to stay within the Overton window at all times, or do a bunch of them have tenure Anyway, the real threats to senior academics are program closures, populist political personalities adversarial to higher education, and increasingly Orwellian legal regimes

120

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

so I just want to emphasize something here that non-media people might not pick up on: Marisa is an independent journalist and is taking on the risk of being sued by Moraff here without any institutional backing. That's admirable bravery - and also means being very, very certain of the facts.

2848111085

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Marisa Kabas @marisakabas.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Exclusive from me — Daniel Moraff, one of the political operatives behind Graham Platner's rise and fall, has been accused of sexual assault. Full story here:

thehandbasket.co

Exclusive: Political operative behind Graham Platner's rise accused of sexual assault

A spokesperson for Daniel Moraff said: “Any suggestion that he committed a criminal offence is false and without foundation."

26973522018

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Count Binface @countbinface.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

Here it is. My manifesto for the 2026 Clacton By-Election. It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Join me, clean up Clacton and let's make 13th August Bin Day! #VoteBinface #VoteyMcVoteface #YesWeTinCan

29469622160

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Olivia Hill @machineiv.bsky.social · 25/07/2026

Today is July 25th, often celebrated as the fall of Italian fascism. Mussolini passed draconian controls over pasta production which he considered decadent and overly reliant on foreign grain. Today, we celebrate his fall with a simple, defiant partisan dish: 1) Pasta 2) Creamy butter 3) Parmesan

712444593

Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing) @ericderoulet.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

An acceptance in the inbox. Obviously, I won't say more yet.

100

Reposted by Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Brendan Nyhan @brendannyhan.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

In a free country, failing to comply with law enforcement does not give the state license to murder you

34460161491