Alastair Y. Su（苏源豪）

I’m delighted to be featured in the SSRC’s latest issue of Frontiers in Social and Behavioral Science. Working on my article made me rethink of opium not as a social “vice” but as a resource for managing epidemic risk, explaining its prevalence on the high seas and the Chinese coolie trade.

a man is sitting on a couch and saying " i 'm gonna kidnap the president of the united states " ALT: a man is sitting on a couch and saying " i 'm gonna kidnap the president of the united states "

Nicholas Cage would like a word

Historians don’t always get to visit the places they write about, but I’m so glad I did!

Why did you have to choose violence

The academic’s mid-summer crisis is a mid-life crisis in miniature:

You realize summer is half gone, & not only that: you see that the longest & least burdened days came early, & they are well past. You compare all you thought you’d do against the days remaining & grieve for what never will be

RIP Diogo 🥺 You were always one of my favorites.

The Opiated Ocean: Drugs, Addiction, and Disease in La Trata Amarilla Abstract. In December 1853, British officials at Hong Kong amended the Passenger Acts to allow the substitution of “opium for tobacco” on voyages taking in

In “The Opiated Ocean,” @suyh.bsky.social analyzes the regulation of opium in 19th century Chinese trade, arguing its widespread provision among the indentured workers was a means to stave off seaborne epidemics to preserve profitability of contract labor. #AHR 🗃️

That’s the article in brief: due to maritime epidemic risk, governments and labor contractors conjoined the circulation of coolie labor and smoking opium beyond China’s borders. If you’d like more, please give it a read! (5/5)

Thus began my four-year investigation through multiple archives that included Spanish and Chinese sources. In short, I learned that smoking opium wasn’t causing sickness; it was sickness that caused many Chinese to smoke opium, which forced contractors to make the drug freely available. (4/5)

I was puzzled: smoking opium is not something you overdose from. So why were they being tagged like that? And where did the opium come from? (3/5)

A mortality table for the “Golden Eagle,” a Chinese coolie vessel. 12 passengers died from opium (“resultas de anfion”).

I was researching Chinese coolie voyages (la trata amarilla or “the yellow trade”) when I stumbled into a weird finding. In Hong Kong and Havana, authorities were noting cases of passengers that died from smoking opium (Spanish: “resultas de anfion”) while at sea. (2/5)

I’m delighted to share that my article, “The Opiated Ocean” is out today in the #AHR: doi.org/10.1093/ahr/....

For those curious, here’s how the article came about🧵 (1/5)

Third Amendment Rights Group Celebrates Another Successful Year WASHINGTON, DC—The National Anti- Quartering Association, America’s foremost Third Amendment rights group, held its annual gala in Washington Monday to honor 191 consecutive years of advocating the pr...

Always an Onion article.

My firstborn daughter graduated kindergarten today. Where has all the time gone 😭

when this is over I’m getting a J Pow tattoo

Per Curiam: The Constitution assigns Congress the exclusive powers to “lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises,” and to “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations.” U.S. Const. art. I, § 8, cls. 1, 3. The question in the two cases before the court is whether the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 (“IEEPA”) delegates these powers to the President in the form of authority to impose unlimited tariffs on goods from nearly every country in the world. The court does not read IEEPA to confer such unbounded authority and sets aside the challenged tariffs imposed thereunder.

BREAKING - A 3-judge panel of the US Court of International Trade has just INVALIDATED Trump's tariffs.

Says Trump CANNOT use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act of 1977 to unilaterally impose tariffs; that power belongs to Congress.

MORE TK

storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.us...

I’m pleased to share that “The Opiated Ocean” will appear in this June’s #AHR issue as the opening article. For those interested in drug, labor and commodity history—stay tuned!

Rethinking a Continent – AHA Get a sneak peek of the June 2025 issue of the American Historical Review.

In #AHAPerspectives, get a sneak peek of the June issue of the American Historical Review, including articles on opium, terminology for slavery, and counterrevolution, a forum on the concept of "Big Asia," and contributions on searchability and using archival databases in the classroom. 🗃️

Thanks Jonathan! Can’t wait to read more of your work too.

A bill how the government makes law; coo coo birds are the people currently making them.

ELF final: stoppable force meets moveable object

The front page of the Chicago Sun-Times, featuring the pope waving under the words "DA POPE!" Subheadline says, "Chicagoan Robert Prevost, known to many on the South Side as 'Father Bob' and now to millions as Pope Leo XIV, becomes first American pontiff. The best coverage of Chicago's pope, pages 2-10."

Today's front page.

How’s compliance been?

Everyone Is Cheating Their Way Through College ChatGPT has unraveled the entire academic project.

An alarmist take, but mostly correct. Over the last two years, I have seen how robots have not only eaten my students’ homework, but the concept of homework itself.

The only check left is convincing my students that outsourcing one’s thinking is a bad idea. Some will agree; most will not.

Congratulations! Can’t wait to assign this to my students 😎

So many final papers missing this semester. But my students can’t help it if Biden keeps eating their homework!!!

personally would like to see every store show what part of the price increase is due to tariffs bc if these tariffs ever come down, i need to see that price go right back down

WE DID IT #YNWA

You will never get a new, revolutionary, truly good sentence or work of art by seeking out the perfect middle of all known beliefs. It's why AI is flawed as a creative machine, and why governing to polls is futile.

We want new, beautiful, surprising things, politically, artistically, and otherwise.

Ensuring National Security and Economic Resilience Through Section 232 Actions on Processed Critical Minerals and Derivative Products By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, as

Nothing is more emblematic of the Trump Administration's approach to trade policy than this.

Two weeks after "Liberation Day", with a trade war on China raging, they are only now ordering an investigation of what rare earths the US imports, from whom, and why.

www.whitehouse.gov/presidential...