Feel like it should be a bigger story that Howard Lutnick's firm (run by his kids) created a financial product to buy up tariff refund claims at a major discount, and will now be cashing in on the higher costs passed onto consumers.
Getting your bi-yearly royalty statement for a niche academic monograph is always a bit of a humbling experience.
The British fleet temporarily stayed there after the Convention of Chuenpi in early 1841.
A map depicting naval movements and clashes around Canton, dated 1841.
On the last day of an archival research trip I always treat myself to some time in the map room. This is one of today's finds.
Starving the Beeb and dismantling the academic sector will go down as some of the worst policy decisions of the UK in recent history, alongside the brexit referendum. This country really knows how to squander its influence.
Cambridge is looking lovely this week.
"We should really revamp our public education system. Our next generation has to be much more connected to China in terms of language and culture." 🫠
I'll be in Cambridge doing research for a few days next week. Looking forward to seeing old friends and colleagues.
I came here to recommend Angola. That game is such an important piece of wargaming history. I once played it with three African historians, which was a very humbling experience.
Has anyone noticed a new trend of UK institutions asking for letters of reference for job applications *before* shortlisting? This seems like a bad development.
There is no ceasefire in Lebanon. Israel has been bombing Lebanon non-stop since last night. If anything Israel is expanding its war on Lebanon.
You are being lied to
"His call for genocide is just a rhetorical device, he probably wont carry through with it" as prevailing political commentary is pretty fucking bleak.
this is a useful comparison but actually way undershoots the extent of the purges in China by only counting the officially gone and excluding the much larger category of disappeared, which adds about another 69 senior officers since 2023.
chinapower.csis.org/china-pla-mi...
What a spectacularly poor idea
These days Beijing doesn't need to kidnap Hong Kong booksellers overseas. The HKPF does their work for them in broad daylight.
The number of displaced persons in Lebanon is now over a million. 20% of the population, roughly, is unable to sleep their home tonight.
I'm spending today not writing (because of a wrist injury) and instead following the election in Denmark. I haven't been able to vote in almost two decades, but somehow still feel invested in the results.
I got some heart-breaking messages from Myanmar friends about this new passport law.
Many fear that they will be forced to return to renew their passports, running the risk of arrest or conscription. Not to mention all the other additional problems with the law
www.irrawaddy.com/news/burma/m...
More HK art from the Rijksmuseum, this one a photograph from 1988 by Vincent Samuel Mentzel.
View of North Point, in aquarelle, from 1895. From the collections of the Rijksmuseum .
I've been distracting myself from the current reality by reading about extremely wealthy families waging wars against each other over territory they could rarely hold, either to enrich themselves or to distract from domestic schisms, until those domestic issues grew completely out of control.
A stack of recently released HK movies frlm the 1980s on Blu-ray.
I've been into HK cinema since watching my first John Woo film in Cinemateket in Copenhagen ~25 years ago. It's very odd that we are currently in a new golden age when it comes to restoration and accessibility of HK films on physical media, despite the state of the actual HK movie industry.
Ah, so guilt and introspection were invented (checks notes) in Vienna in the 1910s.
I've been distracting myself from the current reality by reading about extremely wealthy families waging wars against each other over territory they could rarely hold, either to enrich themselves or to distract from domestic schisms, until those domestic issues grew completely out of control.
I think this is spot on: "this isn’t theology nor a new kind of “enlightenment,” it’s a revenue model."
Reminder to avoid the Thiel distraction. A point we’ve been hitting on tour is the temptation to apply intellectual history methods to a regime of accumulation (digital capitalism) is misguided. You won’t understand the Tech Right by reading books (they don’t read). Look at how they run their firms.
Deeply gratified to see this rich and surpassingly engaging essay/review of my The Second Emancipation, by the estmable Adom Getachew. www.thenation.com/article/worl...
As much as this is Trump's war, bombing Iran is also something the GOP has wanted to do for two decades. How could we forget McCain on the campaign trail in 2007.
Very similar experience here. Could also tell a similar story in reverse about strawberries, having grown up with wild strawberries in Scandinavia and then being severely let down by most supermarket strawberries elsewhere.
