Mason L. Wong 王樂知

hmmm I guess the primary reason is when students only begin to *discuss" the idea of occupying their own campus (never mind Lujiazui) or workers begin to discuss organising in WeChat groups, they'd be arrested or reprimanded.

Sora is not the real problem here. The real problem is that in 12, at most 24 months, there will be a Sora clone from Tencent or Alibaba that is just as good and can be run by anybody with a 5099, at which point everyone in society needs to rapidly agree to treat all digital video as fake, period.

For the millionth time: generative video is not a technology that should be available to the public.

Certainly not as a SAAS service, and definitely not OSS models without any guardrails.

We’re about to be inundated with propaganda and CSAM.

One thing that especially sticks in my mind is that you don't even need to be far sighted to see this. You cannot build this shit without knowing that and just not caring. And I also don't think you can untangle it from the reaction against MeToo.

This stuff is plainly evil and it’s frankly comical that so many people stand to defend it from even a technical perspective under present conditions.

I do not regret to inform you that we are going to win

The Microchip Titans | Los Angeles Review of Books Mason Wong reviews three books related to US-China tech industries and global competition.

New review essay out in @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social by @masonlwong.bsky.social on three books, one of them Honghong Tinn's Island Tinkerers: Innovation and Transformation in the Making of Taiwan’s Computing Industry lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

The Microchip Titans | Los Angeles Review of Books Mason Wong reviews three books related to US-China tech industries and global competition.

I wrote for @lareviewofbooks.bsky.social on Palantir, the chip industry, US-China competition, and what tech firms mean when they talk about "defending Western civilization."

Thanks to @jwassers.bsky.social, @bspivey.bsky.social, and the LARB team for the edits!

lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-...

“As public rhetoric about technology adopts a dire and self-righteous tone, the ethical and normative stakes of this contest have become less and less clear.” Mason Wong on three books about US-China tech competition and the global chip industry. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-grove/

Your brain is seriously broken if you think traditional academia and VC tech bros are the only two options. What an absurdly false binary.

“Write a Chotiner interview with a character from the book you just read” would be a fantastic high school literature assignment

Lower Than Cowards The surrender of America’s elites

"The sheer number of American elites willing to acquiesce to the destruction of democratic institutions is demoralizing. But it’s worth noting that many ordinary people seem to be made of sterner stuff."
www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Avec ses attaques contre la science, Donald Trump incendie la bibliothèque d’Alexandrie, par Nils Gilman Le président américain menace d’effacer les bases de données et les institutions qui ont fait des États-Unis la superpuissance scientifique mondiale. Si rien n’est fait, c’est l’équivalent moderne de ...

MAGA is burning down the U.S. scientific system. Europe has the opportunity and duty to offer a refuge for American scientists and their work. My latest (in French): www.lexpress.fr/idees-et-deb...

Rightly understood, the humanities and the sciences do not compete with one another, but instead are two complementary sides of the same epistemological commitment.

We are in a global war against fascism, not of our choosing, and we need to win it. That means destroying it everywhere it reigns.

a Muppet waiting for godot would be great

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OK academia.edu's new terms are bad. how about RG, is it equally bad? I checked and for now, it isn't as bad. key difference is ACA now can use not only your uploads, but also your personal info (is it even legal under GDPR?) *in any manner*. RG says they can use your uploads

Jill Lepore Thinks the U.S. Constitution Might Break America

oh looks like jill lepore wrote the book i thought i might write www.nytimes.com/2025/09/14/b...

"the most important anticolonial intellectuals may not use the language of decolonization and may not be in unis, but on the streets, with social movements, and in prison" Alpa Shah. not the state-affiliated think tanks talking deco, not the deco big names talking multipolar civilizational order

This is the biggest attack on free speech since the McCarthy era but it also has significantly less popular consensus behind it than the second Red Scare. It's being done on behalf of a minority faction led by the most unpopular president in modern history. Organizing against this can win.

like i said: they do not have the legal capacity to do the shit they want

“I can, with technology, solve fundamental problems of politics” bad, stupid, there is no app that gets ride of collective action or principle agent issues

“I can, with technology, change the underlying constraints of a specific political problems” maybe worth listening to! really depends!

i think that if the FCC threatened to revoke ABC’s license unless it replaced Jimmy Kimmel with Kevin Hart to diversify the network, Ilya Shapiro would be able to identify the issue here

sorry but at some point you have to stop being concerned about appearing cool and detached and actually start believing in things, even if it means defending the rights of stupid people like jimmy kimmel

Agreed, and I think part of this is Pritzker gets more than most how being the anti-Trump isn't trying to out-funny the funny man, to compete in the irony-poised joke game, to be another outlandish character. It's being earnest and serious about the stakes of a real crisis, like a functional adult.

I think an absolute majority of the world’s population lives in D, which is also and not coincidentally the winner here

This has been coming from the beginning. All major democracy-supporting NGOs and foundations have their legal complaints already drafted. And in time, perhaps not even much time, they will win their cases. What is needed most in the meantime is courage. Keep saying what you think, doing what you do.

I can tell you this is how it is in Hong Kong now. At least 2 million ppl supported the 2019 protests and the pro-democracy movement in general. The govt knows it can't possibly jail all of them so they make high profile examples of some while "patriots" make threatening phone calls to others.

Let me put it this way: Mahmoud Khalil is a Palestinian immigrant with a green card who worked with deeply unpopular groups. My median follower is a white guy with a 401(k) who was born in this country. We all need to be a little braver than we have been; we can afford it.