Four days of persistently bad air pollution, with AQI above 100, including while Hong Kong hosting Rugby Sevens, with hundreds of thousands of tourists in town, and zero coverage of the problem in local media. Nor does HKO monitor or alert high AQI, far more harmful than mildly cold or hot temps.
I don't recall any previous transformative technologies that had to be sold to the public so hard. No one in 1999 was going, "Guys. Cell phone? It's coming, whether we like it or not. I think it's important, FOR WOMEN ESPECIALLY, to learn about cell phone. So that we're not left behind!!"
Anand Gopal already wrote one of the best narrative non-fiction books in No Good Men Among the Living, but Days of Love and Rage is a staggering, awe-inspiring piece of journalism, a beautiful, tragic portrait of the Syrian revolution everyone should read: www.plutobooks.com/product/days...
BREAKING: 150+ journalists including @maddow.bsky.social @ellenwapo.bsky.social @jamestgriffiths.com @doctorow.pluralistic.net @taylorlorenz.bsky.social @kattenbarge.bsky.social are thanking @archive.org for services to journalism.
✍🏻Journalists can still sign at www.savethearchive.com/journalists/
Major news organizations including The New York Times and USA Today are blocking the Wayback Machine while using it as a tool for their reporting. Attacks on the Internet Archive jeopardize Internet freedom, free speech, and data integrity.
Screenshot of a Fight For the Future article 100+ Journalists Applaud the Internet Archive's Role in Preserving the Public Record. It includes the text “Rachael Maddow declares the Archive is a 'national treasure' as uncertainty mounts on whether today's journalism will be preserved for future generations." Below is a photo of Wayback Machine Mark Graham addresses an audience, standing before a lectern that reads “Journalists ❤️ Internet Archive,” with several attendees on stage. Photo by Kenyatta Thomas.
100+ journalists, including Cory Doctorow, Rachel Maddow and many more, are backing the Internet Archive’s #WaybackMachine as essential to preserving the public record 🗂️
Read more at Fight for the Future 👇
www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2026-04...
🧵⬇️
@fightforthefuture.org
samuel beckett was born on this day 120 years ago. astonishing to think that if he had survived, and could run 100m in 9.57 seconds, he would be not only the oldest but also the fastest man in the world - together with his nobel prize for literature, an astonishing trifecta
Per the recently revamped Hong Kong History Museum, the city "has long been rooted in the fertile soil of Chinese civilisation, sharing a cultural lineage with the motherland since ancient times.”
Why does Ms. Kuok think that Hong Kong is a place apart from China?
hongkongfp.com/2026/04/02/h...
![“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,” said Hui Kuok, chair and group chief executive of the Shangri-La luxury hotel group.
Kuok is the daughter of Robert Kuok, founder of the hotel group and Malaysia’s richest man.
“One way to do this could be over time to make Putonghua [Standard Mandarin] the main medium of instruction in schools,” she said, speaking at HSBC’s Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong.
“Another way could be for Hong Kong to invite some of the best public schools in China to open campuses here, just like we have done for international schools for decades.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:gxznrosgdodxufkm6mjfim56/bafkreig2mn27w7dsrnmw23fpwh7h5elh65zoqc2kac7mqgb7jg5p7ixhfq)
“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,” said Hui Kuok, chair and group chief executive of the Shangri-La luxury hotel group. Kuok is the daughter of Robert Kuok, founder of the hotel group and Malaysia’s richest man. “One way to do this could be over time to make Putonghua [Standard Mandarin] the main medium of instruction in schools,” she said, speaking at HSBC’s Global Investment Summit in Hong Kong. “Another way could be for Hong Kong to invite some of the best public schools in China to open campuses here, just like we have done for international schools for decades.”
(a) Putonghua widely used in HK schools already, with most public schools teaching Chinese via Putonghua, despite dubious pedagogical justification.
(a) This would cause rapid decline of Cantonese, as in Guangdong and severely undermine the language's future viability.
www.ft.com/content/1de8...
EFF confirms that not only is remaining on X supporting a platform dominated by harassment and disinformation, but it doesn't even translate to any additional traffic: www.theverge.com/tech/909550/...
While many journalists hit the phones and cultivate source relationships, when news breaks Lichtenberg often uploads press releases or analyst notes into AI tools and prompts them to spit out articles that he can edit and publish quickly. His work involves what some view as the third rail of journalism: AI playing a leading role not just in researching, but in writing stories.
Old Neiman Lab profile of Neetzan Zimmerman being a traffic machine.
Compare the profile of Nick Lichtenberg praised by Tucker to old profiles of Gawker's Neetzan Zimmerman, who was doing basically the same thing manually at the height of the Google traffic funnel. Zimmerman tried this approach again at The Messenger, it failed, and not because he couldn't use AI.
WSJ editor wants everyone to use AI to produce slop stories that readers probably won't read and will devalue the point of subscribing to the Journal.
This is so grim. What's the point of mass producing slop for a subscription-driven publication? This is something that would have been useful in a previous era of media, when you could have flooded Google with AI stories (as slop sites continue to do) and made ad revenue. Today, worthless.
For tourists who breach the law but do not have sufficient cash, officers will issue electronic fixed penalty tickets that allow payment via e-channels such as the Faster Payment System, Alipay and WeChat Pay.
Official statistics showed Hong Kong’s smoking rate stood at 9.1 per cent for those aged 15 and over in 2023, among the lowest in developed economies. Fewer than 1 per cent reported daily use of heated tobacco or vapes.
World's Freest Economy™ will fine you HK$3,000 for having a vape, but cigarettes are fine. And don't worry, tourists can pay their fines electronically. www.scmp.com/news/hong-ko...
Unclear how much is political fear, vs. takeover of comms by an extremely conservative, do-nothing PR class that see protecting their jobs by avoiding anything that even hints of controversy as the key priority, rather than facilitating potentially interesting or positive coverage.
Was reminded of it after a couple recent frustrations, both with the government and other Hong Kong institutions (big businesses, universities, etc) that seem to have adopted similar no-press-is-best approach.
Two years ago, @hongkongfp.com did this great piece on how Hong Kong govt thwarts own stated goal of getting press to "tell good Hong Kong stories" by stonewalling media outlets, especially independent and foreign media, even on completely uncontroversial stories: hongkongfp.com/2024/01/23/h...
It’s fun—a macabre sort of fun—this parlor game of “Who Goes AI?” And it simplifies things—asking the question in regard to specific journalists.
www.todayintabs.com/p/who-goes-ai
Mahfuz Anam holds up a copy of The Daily Star with the headline "Unbowed," produced after the attacks.
The Daily Star was, along with fellow Bangladeshi daily Prothom Alo, torched by a far-right mob in December 2025. Both papers only missed a single day in print, with staff determined to keep the papers going in defiance of those who tried to silence them.
“Those who set us on fire wanted the paper to die,” said Mahfuz Anam, editor-in-chief of The Daily Star. “We refused to give them the satisfaction.” www.theglobeandmail.com/world/articl...
Screenshot of an SCMP promotional email asking "do you agree" with four comments on an article.
The article in question is about refugees, and the top comment is some bigot.
Staggeringly bad promotional email from SCMP, not only do I have no desire to read the comments, but the ~top~ highlighted one in this email is a perfect example of why. (And the second curated comment appears to be from a different article entirely...)
"A country this hooked on gambling probably doesn’t need to turn more of life into a game of chance, played alone, on the knife’s edge." www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/o...
The journalists said in the complaint that one official, Hui Jing, demanded “loyalty” to the Trump administration if reporters wanted to “keep their jobs.” www.nytimes.com/2026/03/23/u...
"This is a case about censorship and propaganda carried out by the U.S. government. It comes in the midst of an international crisis and conflict, when access to unbiased news and information, as mandated by the Constitution and by Congress, is crucial." storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...
"Safeguarding national security is a continuous endeavour with no end point." www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/...
Seen this happen first hand with people in the EA space who are fully committed to animal welfare, but get sucked in either by Rocco's basilisk type longtermism, or simply because they want to work in sexy AI field where the money and attention is, instead of grinding away on animals or climate.
Bleak to think about how much time, talent and money has been wasted by various EA projects pivoting from very worthy (but slow, difficult and depressingly quantifiable) animal welfare projects to vague, hand-wave-y AI speculation.
www.technologyreview.com/2026/03/23/1...
"Chinese leaders do not currently plan to execute an invasion of Taiwan in 2027, nor do they have a fixed timeline for achieving unification."
www.reuters.com/world/china/...
John Burns, who got his start as a political journalist for @theglobeandmail.com before a punch from Pierre Trudeau sent him to China, beginning a 44-year career as a foreign correspondent that would see him win two Pulitzer Prizes, died March 12. He was 81.
www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
The Communist Party once supported an expansive view of minority language promotion and protection. No more. Putonghua’s march across the country has already pushed many Chinese and non-Chinese languages to the brink, new law could be the nail in the coffin.
