Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

According to Thiel and Karp, the United States can only maintain its technological and strategic superiority if tech companies ally with the US military. Critics— particularly former employees—argue that the founders use this pro-Western mission and Tolkien symbolism to give young employees the idea that they are contributing to something "bigger." But in practice, this rhetoric should primarily foster loyalty. In an interview at an event hosted by investment bank JP Morgan, Alex Karp described his company's culture as a "cult, minus the drugs and the sex." Palantirians are "snobby" about their intellect, difficult to convince, and driven not by money but by technical challenges and the founders' mission, Karp said. "My success is in making Palantirians believe my ideas are theirs." "

and? the pursuit of technological and strategic superiority. ensure tech company's loyalty to the military. it's something "bigger", civilizational, world-historical.

Libertarian Thiel and Democrat Karp differ in their political views but share a common aversion to the culture of progressive, woke Silicon Valley, which they believe forces companies to engage in moral self-censorship. For this reason, Palantir moved its headquarters from California to Denver, the capital of Colorado, five years ago. Karp and Thiel espouse a "techno-libertarian" belief: the government should do nothing to hinder technological progress. In their worldview, the best changes come not from lengthy deliberation or democratic consensus, but from radical choices made by visionary thinkers and entrepreneurs. Thiel, in particular, regularly delivers fierce criticism of what he sees as the conformist culture of politicians and scientists. People who, in his view, behave in a morally"

commonalities & differences between US techno-libertarians and Chinese techno-authoritarians. the former "the govt should do nothing to hinder tech progress", the latter "the govt should do everything to enable and guide tech progress". both anti-democratic and anti "woke".

fascinating read on Palantir's ideologues and "cult" culture beyond Peter Thiel (I assume machine translation is pretty reliable with Dutch-English)

Screenshot text from The Guardian: He believes the Armageddon will be ushered in by an antichrist-type figure who cultivates a fear of existential threats such as climate change, AI and nuclear war to amass inordinate power. The idea is this figure will convince people to do everything they can to avoid something like a third world war, including accepting a one-world order charged with protecting everyone from the apocalypse that implements a complete restriction of technological progress. In his mind, this is already happening. Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money.” It’s because the antichrist talks about Armageddon nonstop. We’re all scared to death that we’re sleepwalking into Armageddon. And then because we know world war three will be an unjust war, that pushes us. We’re going hard towards peace at any price. What I worry about in that sort of situation is you don’t think too hard about the details of the peace and it becomes much more likely that you get an unjust peace. This is, by the way, the slogan of the antichrist: 1 Thessalonians 5:3. It’s peace and safety, sort of the unjust peace. Let me conclude on this choice of antichrist or Armageddon. And again, in some ways the stagnation and the existential risks are complementary, not contradictory. The existential risk pushes us towards stagnation and distracts us from it. How does Thiel think Armageddon will happen? Thiel rarely gives a definitive answer about who exactly the antichrist might be or how Armageddon might come about – a central point across his lectures is that nothing is written in stone or inevitable – but he does give the contours of what a global conflict that could lead to Armageddon might look like.

People paid $200 a ticket to listen to Peter Thiel do bog issue antisemitism for four lectures about his belief in the antichrist.

Lots of fools wishing to be relieved of their money, I guess.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

thanks! good to see it resonates beyond the Sinophone circle.

Some thoughts on Zhongyuan Mandarin On why re-examining our “dialects” is about resisting hierarchies, opposing discrimination, and pursuing linguistic justice, rather than cultural “orthodoxy”.

Some thoughts on Zhongyuan Mandarin - from someone growing up internalizing the stigma associated with our native dialect chenchenzhang.net/2025/10/05/s...

it's an endless battle

my dad brought this custom here while visiting. every time we ate out, he'd find some way to pay away from the table, while pretending to go to bathroom (maybe real too), WITHOUT SPEAKING ENGLISH.

"katy_ward 15h You know what's hot? When the guy gets up and goes to the waiter to pay away from the table, letting me think he went to the bathroom. Apex flirting right there"

don't know it's hot but that's every group meal in China

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

Good morning, in today's edition of How UK Universities are Becoming More Like the US, but not in terms of quality, research rigour, or internalisation www.theguardian.com/education/20...

the most non-sarcastic pepe bot I've seen. or maybe an AI explain that no one needs is the newest form of sarcasm...

The BBC's justification for platforming Farage beyond the actual significance of his small parliamentary party are his polls. A rather cynical explanation, for he wouldn't be where he is without the constant, uncritical appearances he's given on the BBC. It's a (literally) vicious circle.

Yangyang Cheng is one of them most astute, insightful, and sensitive writers chronicling the political, cultural, and technological life of China today. I am so honored that she took the time to read and review these two novels by Fang Fang.

chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/09/f...

“Giving up the Idea of Home”: Ambivalent Geographies, Geopoetics, and Resisting Capture in the Cities of the Middle East Abstract. This paper sits with the geopoetics of the Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal to grapple with affective ambivalence towards common objects of d

Just out paper which might be of interest to those who work on Urban Geograpy, Geographies of Home, and affective thinking (especially ambivalence).

It is a paper that considers the wonderful Iman Mersal's poetic oeuvre as a form of geography.

academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

Composite of Bernard Manning clips on social media with the title: Bernard Manning rides again: how TikTok and Instagram are promoting racist “jokes” to teens

Bernard Manning rides again: how TikTok and Instagram are promoting racist “jokes” to teens

Sketches from the 70s & 80s featuring slurs including the N word are going viral on social media, shared by millions and boosted by algorithms

@stokel.bsky.social reports

www.thenerve.news/p/bernard-ma...

there's a catchphrase on Chinese social media which is "question something, understand something, become something" 质疑 理解 成为
that I think sums up Matt Goodwin'a journey from a researcher of the far right to understanding & becoming

screenshot of a video showing the newly finished Huajiang Xiagu bridge

Jeet Heer: Sure this seems impressive but think of how ridiculously far China lags in funding wars in the Middle East.

Caitlin Johnstone: First time I saw a video of this bridge I knew it was in China without being told just because it was awesome and not shitty. Seeing impressive infrastructure as a westerner these days is like seeing a flying saucer: you look at it and go "Well that definitely wasn't made by us."

Steve Hall: What was I just saying? What you can do when you combine Marx with Keynes and throw your Hayek and Friedman in the bin with the rotten, stinking vegetables where they belong. And the 'bond vigilantes' can shove their yields up their backsides.

"Chinese bridge" content on X is a genre on its own. this one about the newly opened Huajiang Xiagu bridge got 33k reposts, of which 6k+ quote shares. I want to say I want to make it my next project, but also I have too many next projects.

Extract from the linked article "Race Reports": "What does it mean for the university to acknowledge the 'displacement of indigenous people' in the nineteenth century as a generative driver of its wealth at the same time as it exhibits a studied indifference or, worse, active hostility to those campaigning against the decimation of the indigenous people of Palestine in the genocide that has been ongoing since October 2023? Within weeks of the onset of the genocide an early facade of institutional neutrality, itself premised on a morally objectionable equation of the violence of the colonised and the coloniser, gave way to outright condemnation of Palestine solidarity"

"Race Reports: How universities 'reckon' with their imperial past, and how their investment portfolios say otherwise." www.versobooks.com/en-gb/blogs/...

Excellent - by @rahulraothariel.bsky.social

I think he meant fuelling European hostility towards China. typical of a kind of leftist thinking (also Chomsky, said he wouldn't criticize "enemy states" because that could be used for foreign policy aggression).

once a relatively famous European leftist activist/writer invited me to be in convo with Wang. I said no and also linked the piece. he said: this is very disturbing. the piece compares Wang to Heidegger, which is like compares Xi to Nazi, which is inviting wars. I'm like???

still there have been lots of protests throughout the country, which Wang Hui should know very well.

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.

And here we go. I never wrote this article, and yet it is cited here.

www.liberalbriefs.com/geopolitics/...

And of course, it sounds so plausible, I seriously checked whether I had forgotten it, or the footnote was slightly wrong.

#AIisnotresearch

Renewables overtake coal as world's biggest source of electricity Developing countries lead the historic clean energy charge but the US and EU rely more on fossil fuels than before, a think tank study shows.

"Developing countries, especially China, led the clean energy charge but richer nations including the US and EU relied more than before on planet-warming fossil fuels for electricity generation."
www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

The Factory Workers Who Helped Build a Nation A photographer strives to protect the memory of China’s Third Front Movement and the families who dedicated their lives to it.

I am a third-generation of the Third Front Movement. There’s a saying that captures the experience of families like ours: “First we devote our youth, then we devote our whole lives — in the end, even the futures of our children and grandchildren are tied to the cause.”

This 👇👏👏👏

Believe it or not, this is only the second most naive and clueless thing I've been told about the immigration system. Number one belongs to my own mother, who was so insulated by my dad that she actually asked me "can't I just bring a relative from Brazil to help me care for the house?"

oh no

Today, David Adler, Co-General Coordinator of the Progressive International, was detained by Israeli Occupation Forces with the crew of the Global Sumud Flotilla.

On Yom Kippur, read David’s personal letter explaining why his Jewish heritage demanded he join the Flotilla.

buff.ly/Cjxfawt