iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by locust shell 空蝉

Pavel @spavel.bsky.social · 07/10/2026

the literacy crisis in this country is out of control

I can recall meeting older scholars, long ago, who said that when they were young they had a hard time getting their hands on a copy of Shiji or Han shu. If they were lucky enough to get one, they thought nothing of copying the entire text out by hand, so they could recite it day and night. In recent years merchants engrave and print all manner of books belonging to the hundred schools, and produce ten thousand pages a day. With books so readily available, you would think that students' writing and scholarship would be many times better than what they were in earlier generations. Yet, to the contrary, young men and examination candidates leave their books tied shut and never look at them, preferring to amuse themselves with baseless chatter. Why is this?

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

I found this more funny than not (I mean, really?) but my spouse was less entertained.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Should also add that I’d been wearing my wedding ring the whole time.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 01/10/2026

Cis woman. I was a grad student TA for a gen ed course, male undergrad asked me out/propositioned me *in the written comment section of the end-of-term teaching evaluation form.*

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jamelle @jamellebouie.net · 28/09/2026

“high de-coupling” seems like a nice way to say “extremely fucking gullible”

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

“Net Stockings and Social Nets: Twi’lek Artists’ Survival Strategies Under Imperial Administration“

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"Online Rent-a-Sage" Bret Devereaux @bretdevereaux.bsky.social · 20/09/2026

Higher Education is not just about training workers, but also about training citizen leaders and good citizenship in part means thinking that the details matter, that getting them right matters, because it impacts some of your fellow citizens. "It only matters if job" is poison to citizenship.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

my 9/11 recollection is being a teenager in the middle of moodily reading The Great War And Modern Memory in the days before and after it Happened, which probably explains some things about my adult brain that I’d rather not dig super deep into at this moment. allpoetry.com/Mcmxiv

allpoetry.com

Mcmxiv by Philip Larkin

Read the full text of Philip Larkin's "Mcmxiv." Explore its meaning, poetic devices, and over 49 reader interpretations and comments by fellow poets.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

this is why all the bloated SAAS providers are tripping over themselves to be the one you pay monthly for some kind of AI, though.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

Discovering 咱們 existed as a perfectly common and useful everyday word that *no formal language class had ever so much as hinted at* was so annoying to me. Paradigmatic example of the blind spots you end up with learning language from a textbook/in a classroom.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 23/08/2026

The fact that even the spiny invasives are aesthetically pleasing and produce delicious fruit is just another (unfair) proof that the PNW is god’s country, honestly. Tell it to the greenbrier that tries to dismember me every spring down here.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Emperors in harem dramas are usually not quite dumb enough to fall for this level of groveling sycophancy, imo. Audience has to believe the prize is at least kind of worth the candle for the heroic protagonist. (Maybe late series Consort Ling in Ruyi zhuan though? idk)

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Connor Ewing @cmewing.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

University leadership: We stand ready to support our faculty as they confront the disruptions & uncertainty caused by AI. Faculty: Great! We'll need smaller class sizes, especially for incoming students and— University leadership: Lol, no. We meant like subscriptions to Claude.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 14/08/2026

I was So Young when I read it the first time (in retrospect! Closer to Iselle than Ista, it now amazes me to recall) and I still loved it for that. One of her best, I think.

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Liz Fong-Jones (方禮真) @lizthegrey.com · 29/07/2026

you shouldn't be mad about destroying books. you should be mad about who is allowed to have access to the scans, and why the public isn't able to benefit from this at nominal fee to be paid directly to the author, rather than the knowledge being rented from a middleman.

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Katherine Alejandra Cross @quinnae.com · 24/07/2026

This sort of thing is done for practical reasons, to tell the old story in a fresh way that'll attract audiences old and new. But from a *thematic* standpoint it has the eerie side-effect of making the Star Wars universe feel static and Sisyphean. Nothing ever changes, not really.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

Budding mass movements/public commotions also face stronger headwinds in the PRC than many other places, obviously. That’s true for good causes and vicious ones all alike.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 12/07/2026

My sense is that anti-Black racism, esp. vs Africans, remains strong and awful, but manifests mostly as housing and employment discrimination, intolerance, etc. and not a would-be mass movement (in practice, what would it even be a movement against?)

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

It’s only right and proper for Porthos to be a hot himbo. That’s canon!

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

aha. close enough! Slender West Lake *is* very pretty, in that slightly over-embellished “Qianlong was here“ way, so probably some nice cash incentives involved.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 11/07/2026

If my knowledge of Ming-Qing Yangzhou lore is relevant, probably built a lovely lakeside pavilion and a few pleasure boats and filled them all with opera singers and courtesans. Or an unpermitted KTV, I guess.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

holy crap, I also missed the lucky cat (Japan origin, though I suppose maybe they got it on temu). just an indiscriminate spray hose of racism!

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

Fortune cookies: USA Takeout cartons: USA Kikkoman soy sauce: Japanese brand Calligraphy the set dressers dug up: characters used in TW/HK (not PRC) such a pitch-perfect example of "not geopolitics, just racism" that I almost thought I was watching Katherine O'Hara (RIP) doing a bit. if only.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 09/07/2026

& specifically hard to navigate for a period when the dynasty’s broadly understood to be in decline. is it a win to have your protagonists save the reign of Tianqi or Chongzhen? At least in late Qing your heroes can be “modern” revolutionaries—but in Ming, pro- & anti-monarchists are both fraught.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

And there are things that in-person exams aren’t great for evaluating! So around we go. It’s agony and nobody has an actual good answer.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

Somewhat true, but they you're essentially back to doing oral interviews to fairly evaluate every student. Unfortunately all the more reliable ways of short-circuiting AI cheating have proportionately high time and effort costs and there just doesn't seem to be any getting around that. It sucks.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

“Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty/成化十四年“ features a gunpowder disaster in Beijing as a significant backstory point, but transposed to an earlier reign. May be observer bias/coincidence, but feels like I see fewer explicitly 明末 capital-set dramas—maybe the period is sensitive or just too much of a bummer?

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 08/07/2026

An increasing number of students have also started using AI to write presentations 🙃

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

This is what you see in the mirror in that one scene in e4 of Widow’s Bay.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

this is dragon drool lizard erasure.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

I feel like this is unfair to Cixi in many ways, BUT I can definitely picture him ordering JD poisoned from his deathbed.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

‘most of these repetitive end-of-the-dynasty tropes were obviously getting written into dynastic histories after the fact for didactic reasons’ oh. well, boy is my face red.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

Mostly agree but given… everything… I can’t help feeling there are some Bao Si vibes going around?

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Nicholas Handler @nicholashandler.bsky.social · 05/07/2026

“Salute to America Immediate Evacuation” is an instant classic.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

“I said ‘lake of wine,’ not ‘lake of slime,’ you fools!”

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 04/07/2026

‘Decadent ruler botches the national rites, summons the military for his entertainment, unnatural thunder and poisonous miasma descend on the imperial capital,’ this is all getting very Xia/Shang/Western Zhou coded.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Probably much more of an issue in the days before surgical-quality obstetric tools, honestly.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

And when men scheme, it’s because they’re being woman-like (when you don’t like what they’re planning or how they’re planning it, that’s “scheming,” obviously). Our manly strategy/Their effeminate plotting etc. etc..

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Even “scheming ministers” has a good flavoring of gender spice at times, for that matter. Interesting scholarship on the minister:concubine analogy out there, Martin Huang‘s Negotiating Masculinities in Late Imperial China forex.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

That plus “scheming“ in the context of women under those conditions often just means “she wants something that isn’t 100% identical to what the master wants.” And ”scheming eunuchs” is also very much gender-inflected! >

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Where’s the slapstick montage of Minions carving and setting up Zhang Xianzhong’s Seven-Kill Stele? or were they too busy with the Thirty Years‘ War?

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

M.Y. derailed noisily and in public, but I slept on Klein until the Charlie Kirk absurdity. 22yo me would be bummed out.

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

So many of these early Obama-era “facts over feelings, from the center-left” Wonk Guys have gone off the rails from the moment they actually had to grapple with a fact that didn’t care about their own personal feelings (bigotry is irrational and often intractable, trans people are real, etc.).

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locust shell 空蝉 @locust-shell.bsky.social · 30/06/2026

They’re so gratifying. They grow ridiculously in heat and humidity that kill half the other veggies we like (and nearly kill me), and you can pick like five or six beans and that’s your whole dish. I started mine late this year so they’re not flowering yet and I’m kicking myself for it.

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GOLIKEHELLMACHINE @golikehellmachine.com · 17/06/2026

awake me: oh hey, brain, you’re back early brain: sleep’s haunted awake me: what? brain: *loading a pistol and going back into REM* sleep’s haunted

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Worldcon In Memoriam @wcinmemoriam.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Author Jane Yolen (b.1939) died on June 11. She wrote books and novels for all ages, including Briar Rose, How Do Dinosaurs Say Goodnight?, and The Devil’s Arithmetic. Yolen won 2 Nebulas, a World Fantasy and was named Grand Master by SFPA, SFWA and World Fantasy. She served as SFWA President.

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