New episode! Confucius and Women, with Erin Cline
Misogyny and patriarchy are a later misreading of The Analects, argues the author of a new translation of the Confucian classic.
Listen to the podcast: chinabooksreview.com/2026/04/07/e...
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
These are the words of the president of the United States, today.
The president speaks genocide. And so we too must speak. Not only about crimes, but about their legal punishment.
snyder.substack.com/p/the-presid...
This conversation between Kimberlé Crenshaw and Timothy Snyder (hosted by Jason Stanley) is full of insights. It covers many topics, but key among them are weighing possibilities of and threats to democracy in the contemporary US (as well as in US history).
youtu.be/lB6xBHKVEJ0?...
This collection of essays Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion is now published, and I wrote a short post about it on my blog.
thomasdcarroll.blogspot.com/2026/03/witt...
At a conference in the late 90s, I once spoke with her about her views on theories of truth. She was very generous with her time and my grad student questions!
Get well soon, Jello. The world needs you...🍀🙏
Jello Biafra, Dead Kennedys co-founder and Alternative Tentacles founder, suffered a hemorrhagic stroke on Saturday, March 7, caused by high blood pressure, according to a statement on the Alternative Tentacles website. He is hospitalized but stable.
10 favorite bands/artists to get to know me.
A Tribe Called Quest
William Basinski
David Bowie
John Coltrane
The Cure
Bob Dylan
Godspeed You Black Emperor!
Joy Division
Sonic Youth
Tom Waits
HKFP Lens: Each day, shortly before the sun rises, observant devotees of Theravada Buddhism wait by the side of roads with freshly prepared sticky rice, called khao niew, amongst other things, to offer to monks. Photography by Ayesha Sitara.
In full: hongkongfp.com/2026/02/18/h...
Islamic China with Rian Thum
Islam has been part of China’s religious and cultural fabric for over a millennium, yet often it is seen as a foreign element. The author of a new study explains just how wrong that is.
Listen to the new episode of the podcast: chinabooksreview.com/2026/02/03/r...
Vincent Lloyd on the importance of acknowledging state violence as its visibility expands from the margins of U.S. public culture.
sojo.net/articles/opi...
I wrote this yesterday about the hero city of Minneapolis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKOW...
I wrote this song on Saturday, recorded it yesterday and released it to you today in response to the state terror being visited on the city of Minneapolis. It’s dedicated to the people of Minneapolis, our innocent immigrant neighbors and in memory of Alex Pretti and Renee Good.
Stay free
Photo of lanterns being hung around the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen
Getting ready for the year of the horse 🐴
NEW: I was one of 3 reporters granted access to the convening of 600+ clergy in Minneapolis this week.
It was a striking show of solidarity with MN clergy resisting ICE, but heralded something else: the emergence of a vast, faith-based network trained to resist ICE. religionnews.com/2026/01/23/i...
Live｜Zhaoze "In Snow Storm, Yet Not Back Home" in Wenzhou Dalü
On the last night of 2025, in addition to the over-30-minute rendition of "Birds Contending," Zhaoze also performed their latest EP: "Wind Rising Before Storm Coming " + "In Snow Storm, Yet Not Back Home" .
youtu.be/SOBsq9nZ-ak
"The exam will be compulsory for recipients of Chinese government scholarships starting this year and later phased in more widely, becoming mandatory for all international undergraduate applicants by 2028."
www.insidehighered.com/news/admissi...
this is all to say that should democrats win the house and senate this november, they should hold similarly dramatic — which is to say televised and highly publicized — hearings on the conduct of ICE and CBP, with testimony from victims. we want as much of *this* as possible in the record. (3/?)
Table of Contents for Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion (Wiley, 2026)
Table of Contents for Wittgenstein and the Epistemology of Religion (Wiley, 2026)
Here's the table of contents --
Looking forward to this new collection on Wittgenstein & Epistemology of Religion (edited by Duncan Pritchard & Nuno Venturinha) coming out next month.
It grew out of a couple of conferences held in Lisbon. Looking forward to reading the finished volume!
www.wiley.com/en-us/Wittge...
Tell your elected officials to do everything in their power to stand up to Trump and prevent war with Venezuela.
Email your Members of Congress: act.indivisible.org/sign/stop-tr...
Call your senators: indivisible.org/resource/cal...
And call your representative: indivisible.org/resource/cal...
Semiotic paradox alert!
Christmas tree on the campus of CUHK-Shenzhen
I'd be interested in hearing more about that. Have you written (or do you have plans to write) on Phillips?
I mention Phillips just a few times in the new book, but I engage with his work substantially in my other book, Wittgenstein within the Philosophy of Religion (Palgrave 2014).
BTW, I'm particularly impressed by what P. F. Bloemendaal and Mikel Burley have written on Phillips.
The Biennale theme
The text in the corner of this painting reads: "There is a cake-cafe in Yong-Fu Road in the "French Concession of old Shanghai" renovated in minimalistic nordic interior design sells nerdy-hipster-coffee and cake. Their plates look like old Dutch ware in a touch of the Ming Dynasty."
Allora & Calzadilla, Penumbra and Phantom Forest
Still from a video installation. Here is the text from the didactic: Cheng Xinhao Born in 1985 in Kunming, Yunnan Province, China, where he lives and works. Musica Proibita, 2024 Single-channel video, color, sound 4:35 min. Re-steal, 2024 Mixed media Courtesy of the artist and Tabula Rasa Gallery There are lines of history, along which human and non-human agents travel. Around a century ago, European and US plant hunters came to Yunnan, and with the help of different intermediaries they brought back plants and photographs of local people. I try to bring these "specimens" back again, for example in Re-Steal, I did so by cutting a branch of a rhododendron tree in a botanical garden in Scotland. The very plant was brought there from Yunnan in 1913 by the famous plant hunter George Forrest. I also reenact past scenes, but with different objects and at a different time. For Musica Proibita I placed a gramophone before a rhododendron tree in southwestern China. It played a recording of the early 20th-century tenor Enrico Caruso singing a romantic salon melody. With this work, I make reference to the Austrian-American botanist and explorer Joseph Rock, who spent a quarter century in Yunnan from the 1920s to the 40s studying its Naxi people as well as botanical diversity in the Hengduan Mountains. Rock found the Naxi to be particularly reluctant to be photographed, but fascinated by the music of his gramophone; he would play them Caruso and document them as they gathered to listen.
There is much else to see at the Biennale. One could easily spend the whole day at the PSA just taking in the different installations.
Image of Shao Fan's monumental painting of Kun
Here is the didactic for the painting
A close up of Kun's head
Detail of the middle
I went to Shanghai this weekend & saw the Biennale at the Power Station of Art. Here are a few images of a painting by Shao Fan of Kun from the opening chapter of the Zhuangzi.
