iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Jarrod Watt @jaywatt.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Asked my newly arrived students from mainland to go out and shoot photos of Hong Kong - strictly no Xiaohongshu locations. One of them filed this from the Ladies Market, a) she nailed the brief and b) I'm sad no-one is going to get my George Takei impression in class today: "Oh my"...

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Bouba's Delivery Service @fernmonkey.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

O Tempura would not be a bad name for a Japanese restaurant

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Oops. We developed new technologies as if we were communists believe that they would reduce human toil, and create conditions for flourishing lives. But actually they dominate us, alienate us from each other, reduce us to servants to machines, and diminish our creativity, just as Marx noted in 1844.

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mrg @mrg.name · 21/05/2026

Andrew Stokols on not understanding China. Having just read Scott’s Seeing Like a State this article is fascinating on two levels, first the short discussion on the planned (in Scott’s sense) city Xiong’an. Second, the state legibility on display in the need to provide ID just to talk to people.

sinocities.substack.com

You Don't Understand China!

On the difficulty of studying a country that makes itself hard to study

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mrg @mrg.name · 15/05/2026

The CAGE Research Centre at Uni of Warwick produces a podcast an series on The Great Divergence with prominent guests like Kenneth Pomeranz himself, Joel Mokyr, Robert Allen, Debin Ma, Bishupriya Gupta and Stephen Broadberry. #history #sinology

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Moss on Stone @mossonstone.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

There are over 70 issues of the women's labor magazine 婦人運動, founded by the Working Women's Society (職業婦人社) available to read or download on the Internet Archive, 1923-1930 archive.org/search?query...

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Moss on Stone @mossonstone.bsky.social · 07/05/2026

There are over 60 issues of the Japanese women's suffrage magazine 婦選 published by the 婦選獲得同盟 on Internet Archive, mostly from the 1920s archive.org/search?query...

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Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 06/05/2026

You know why this feels familiar is because I’ve been using and studying China’s internet since before the smartphone.

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Lenore Beadsman @lenorebeadsman.bsky.social · 06/05/2026

esce oggi per Orientalia Senza ali per tornare di Du Fu una testimonianza e una riflessione sull’orrore della guerra attraverso i versi di Du Fu (712-770) uno dei più geniali poeti cinesi di tutti i tempi

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mrg @mrg.name · 02/05/2026

Hot Sinology take: Boodberg's *entire* paper "Philological Notes [...]" is his translation of the incipit of the Daodejing just as the interlinear commentaries on many classical Chinese texts are as much a part of the tradition as the texts themselves. www.jstor.org/stable/27183...

jstor.org

Philological Notes on Chapter One of The Lao Tzu on JSTOR

Peter A. Boodberg, Philological Notes on Chapter One of The Lao Tzu, Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies, Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (Dec., 1957), pp. 598-618

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Financial Times @financialtimes.com · 02/05/2026

The activist known as Teacher Li on the dangerous work of cataloguing everyday life in China — and why he wants to change the CCP, not destroy it: ft.trib.al/Xp0TJn4

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 26/02/2026

All these books and articles about how to change your life, when for so many people right now the challenge is to keep things roughly the same.

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David Hull 胡大衛 @hushuo.bsky.social · 14/02/2026

Today's hot take: Lego sets that use half or more non-blocky blocks are no longer Lego sets. They have become model kits.

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Yuen Chan @yuenchan.bsky.social · 09/02/2026

Jimmy Lai sentenced to 20 years, six senior journalists and news executives sentenced between 6yrs 9mths and 10yrs. All bad enough. And then there are the little details tucked away (but still being reported) in local media that hit really hard like the story of one woman ... 1/

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The Map Center @mapcenter.com · 04/02/2026

One of my favorite datasets depicts waterways of San Francisco before colonialism drained and paved over many of them. Turns out one of the "lakes" was a copy of a copy of a copy etc etc of an ink spill on a Spanish chart from the 1700s that propagated all the way into a modern .geojson file.

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A. M. Vincent @vincent.northsky.social · 03/02/2026

A used bookshop called Maslow's Hierarchy of Reads.

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Graham Webster @gwbstr.com · 02/02/2026

Today's XKCD is a good way to explain to anglophone/US folks how the meaning of a chengyu works.

Cartoon text, two figures:
--HISTORICALLY, IT REFERS TO A CEREMONY TO PREDICT THE
WEATHER USING A RODENT. BUT NOWADAYS PEOPLE OFTEN USE IT TO MEAN "A TIME LOOP
EXPERIENCED BY ONE PERSON."

--...WHAT.

CAPTION: EASILY OUR WEIRDEST HOLIDAY

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 02/02/2026

thinking about how for augustine every confession's, like, an accusation...

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Ryan Ho Kilpatrick 何松濤 @ryanhk.blue · 03/12/2025

Finally read "The Great Reckoning" (www.theideasletter.org/essay/the-gr...), and I'm struck by how the worldview the titular reckoning is said to challenge is not one I've ever held or encountered. Despite the subtitle, I learnt a lot more about what Americans tell themselves than I did about China.

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Annie Zaleski @anniezaleski.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

“You’ll be visited by three spirits.” The three spirits:

a photo from the 90s of pj harvey, bjork and tori amos

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Sam Crane @uselesstree.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

The Useless Tree is back! At least for now. I just posted a long piece on my experience last year at the Tenth Nishan Forum on World Civilizations. Come for the politics of Confucian revival, stay for some jabs at Jeffrey Sachs. Good times! uselesstree.blog/2025/11/22/r...

uselesstree.blog

Reclaiming Confucius from Autocracy

The largest statue of Confucius in the world, in stolid brass, looms 236 feet above the neighboring sprawl of the Nishan Center for World Confucian Studies just outside of Qufu, Shandong Province. …

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Lenore Beadsman @lenorebeadsman.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

piccola lezione la giacca che indossa Liu Jinsong non è quella alla Mao nota come "abito Zhongshan" segue per chi fosse interessato la spiegazione dettagliata del significato della "giacca alla Mao" le quattro tasche del vero "abito Zhongshan" simboleggiano le quattro dimensioni del paese 👇

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Chris Brockett @chrisbrockett.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

As one who has spent much time these last few months glaring at texts I can partially decipher but cannot read, I am qualified to recommend this essay. Edging Toward Japan: What does being literate in Japanese really mean? - The Mainichi share.google/Gw4gLrPrnPyI...

share.google

Edging Toward Japan: What does being literate in Japanese really mean? - The Mainichi

By Damian Flanagan The other day I had the pleasure of attending a very interesting presentation about antique books by an expert in Edo period litera

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 16/11/2025

Can we go back to the days when politicians said that they really wanted to help people but it’s very hard and takes time, rather than saying that they want to hurt people and can do it quickly?

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Kelsey Granger @kelseygranger.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Excited to say that my article on horse names in China's ancient postal system has been published with Early China! 🐎✉️🌿 Meet Skittish Fish, Calm at the Carriage, and, my personal fave, Cinnamon Stick, at the link below: #animalhistory

cambridge.org

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mrg @mrg.name · 13/11/2025

Finally someone that engages with what it actually means to learn from a Leninist one-party system.

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mrg @mrg.name · 10/11/2025

OPHANIM אוֹפַנִּים (Optical Photon and Antimatter Imager) is a 3800 megapixel camera used in the AEgIS αἰγίς high-energy physics project at CERN. In this blog post The Owlet of Minerva tries to pick apart the scientific, biblical Hebrew, medieval European and Buddhist iconography of the instrument.

A circular circuit board with various icons and a text in latin along the circumference and multicoloured squares in the centre.

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Ryan Ho Kilpatrick 何松濤 @ryanhk.blue · 05/11/2025

Very proud to have contributed a few chapters to this book on the past, present, and future of neon in HK. The process showed me how it’s so much more than just sappy sentimentality to mourn HK’s lost lights — and that despite everything… neon’s not dead. Consider backing our Kickstarter campaign ⬇️

kickstarter.com

A Book: Neon Is Not Dead: The Future of a Hong Kong Icon

It's about the rise, fall, and rebirth of Hong Kong’s living light

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 04/11/2025

Whenever anyone gives me a ‘head’s up’ my natural inclination is to keep my head down.

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NotQuietMode_M.D. @notquietmodemd.bsky.social · 01/11/2025

This is my non-Roman Empire

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Jo Wolff @jowolff.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Monarchy spiralling downward with sense of inevitability. President Stephen Fry looking increasingly plausible.

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Ricci Institute for Chinese-Western Cultural History @bcricciinstitute.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Contact prints from photos by Frederick J. Foley 傅良圃. These photos were taken in Taiwan; we're guessing in the 1960s. The Ricci Institute has around 85,000 of Foley's photographic negatives that await digitization. They were given to us in 1985.

A little girl looks into the camera, foliage in the background.

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 31/10/2025

Why does so much of the literature on early agricultural states write as if these sequences of developments are already established and widely agreed upon narratives? Even a Graeber writes as if "as everyone knows." I just need one good "well these bozos over here think X bc Y" lit review.

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Konrad Lawson @kml.muninn.net · 31/10/2025

I added a section to our Frog in a Well Primary Source guide to Korean History with some links to open access copies of volumes with Japanese statistics from colonial Korea - froginawell.net/frog/sources...

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Sabina Knight 桑稟華 @spoem.bsky.social · 30/10/2025

@chinabooksreview.com just published my review of Yu Hua's 余华 *City of Fiction*《文城》(2021, tr. 2025). "Along with other contemporary Chinese works with such graphic violence, Yu’s novel does political work by purging the traumas of China’s bloody 20th century." chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/30/f...

chinabooksreview.com

Yu Hua: Fictional Cities | China Books Review

The bestselling Chinese novelist foregrounds individual suffering in the chaos of modern Chinese history. In his latest novel in translation, gratuitous violence shows the limits of fiction.

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Michael Berry (白睿文) @bairuiwen.bsky.social · 28/10/2025

FYI: Print copies of my book Jia Zhangke on Jia Zhangke is now on sale for 50% at the Duke University Press website if you use the code: FALL25

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Ted @tedzu.bsky.social · 25/10/2025

My favorite use of 嗨：自嗨 or 自high (“self-high”) 😅 This term started out as an internet slang around 2010 and is now widely used colloquially with a range of meanings—to get excited or hyper by oneself; to amuse or have fun by oneself; being self-indulgent or narcissistic 川普自嗨 Trump “self-high”

川普自嗨
https://youtu.be/dWolFfNQSAo?si=7dyd2mVfOjyR1aec

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Naomi Kritzer @naomikritzer.bsky.social · 23/10/2025

This may be my new favorite sign. (Seen today while walking around Hechuan.)

A sign mostly in Chinese but with English translation in small letters.

Police remind:

Do not fight
If you lose you will be hospitalized
If you win you have to go to jail

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mrg @mrg.name · 18/10/2025

A wonderful personal meditation on East Asian literature and how politics seeps into life.

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Ettore Costa @ettorrecos.bsky.social · 16/10/2025

My theory is imposter Simba. The official story is that Simba miraculously escaped the stampede, went into voluntary exile and returned years later to claim the throne from his usurper uncle. How convenient for the new Lion regime! The truth is that Simba died in the stampede with Mufasa

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Gregory Adam Scott 史瑞骼💀 @sudasana.bsky.social · 14/10/2025

Crunched some interesting data from a 1938 Buddhist book catalogue, 佛學圖書目錄. Of approximately 3467 books listed, nearly 3/4 were woodblock printed works. This old technology remained in widespread use through the modern era. crta.info/wiki/%E4%BD%...

A pie chart showing the numbers of items for each means of printing. Woodblock works at 2436, movable type at 990, lithography at 40, and electrotype at 1.

Title page from the catalogue. Full text and data available on the CRTA via the link in the post text

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 13/10/2025

interesting discovery... so the "ham" in "Nottingham" or "Birmingham" is not the same "ham" in "Durham". the first group is from Old English "ham" which is homestead. Durham is from Old English "dun" (hill) + Old Norse "holmr" (river island). a river island like Stockholm.

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Magnus Fiskesjö @magnusfiskesjoe.bsky.social · 12/10/2025

Fifth Digital Appeal to Free Gui Minhai. Take part in the digital manifestation on October 17 which marks 10 years since Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was kidnapped and imprisoned in China. Join in standing up for him: internationalpublishers.org/fifth-digita...

internationalpublishers.org

Fifth Digital Appeal to Free Gui Minhai – International Publishers Association

This year marks ten years since the Swedish publisher Gui Minhai was imprisoned in China. Join us in standing up for him — and for imprisoned publishers around the world — by taking part in the Swedis...

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Michael Berry (白睿文) @bairuiwen.bsky.social · 10/10/2025

“When an era sheds a speck of dust it might not seem like much, but when it falls upon the shoulders of an individual it feels like a mountain.” — Fang Fang This is Banned Books Week, an annual event that celebrates the work of writers whose voices have been suppressed. 1

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Jon Howlett @jonhowlett.bsky.social · 09/10/2025

If your Thursday needs a boost, can I recommend the delightful Jin Shengtan's 金聖嘆 "Thirty-three Nice Things", translated by @bokane.org? www.burninghou.se/p/whats-good — if that’s not nice, what is?

burninghou.se

What's Good? A Collection of Small Nice Things

Everything is awful, the dynasty is collapsing, and the vibes are fucked. Other people have been here before. Here's a few of Jin Shengtan's favorite things to distract you.

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