Daisann

Sam Waterston as Sydney Schanberg and Dr. Haing S. Ngor as Dith Pran in The Killing Fields. Two enormous performances--Dr. Ngor won the Academy Award for his.

As I got off the plane at transit in Seoul there was a sign saying “Welcome to Korea” with 🇰🇷on one side and 🇺🇸 on the other. I felt so ashamed. I know it’s been said before but the way in which the US is destroying every shred of people to people global goodwill is depressing and I think irreparable

I was crossing Flatbush just now and the noise from a very low flying copter was deafening. What’s going on?

The NYT article dryly understates this extraordinary protest as “dozens of countries walked out”. In fact only a handful stayed.

Assata Shakur, political activist and ex-Black Liberation Army member, has died Assata Shakur “died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age,” according to Cuba’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Assata Shakur has "died in Havana, Cuba, as a result of health conditions and her advanced age."

She was 78.

People are saying that the HK gov't overkilled it with the typhoon early warning signals. But having 24 hours of extra prep time certainly saved the day on my little island (the local council distributed free sandbags!). And even with all the warnings, you still had some wacko typhoon selfie takers.

Which is not to say that Khrushchev didn't have an agenda, and (natch) his anti-colonialist stance only applied outside the sprawling borders of the Soviet Union. Still, it was delightful watching K lecturing truth to the UN's smug hypocrites, a nice antidote to last week's horror show.

Coups, colonialism and all that jazz: the film that unravels extraordinary cold war truths Johan Grimonprez’s documentary Soundtrack to a Coup D’Etat reveals the curious link between Black Americans’ fight for civil rights and the assassination of Congo’s first democratically elected Black ...

There's a lot to unpack and learn in this dense doc, but as a Cold War baby I'm riveted by the images of Khrushchev, who loomed in my 6 year old head as the UN shoe-on-desk banger out to bury me. But K, a solid anti-colonialist, is an unexpected hero of this film www.theguardian.com/film/2024/no...

Western palates are texture impoverished and I am forever grateful to my Cantonese friends for showing me the LIGHT.

BTW gumbo pairs quite nicely with an orange wine!

The next 2-3 hours will be the worst it seems. #Ragasa is at 21.2°N, 114.0°E, and my island is 22.28 N, 114.04E. Wind direction has shifted to the East though, so my house will have a bit of protection from the hills to the east and south. Waiting to see photos from my neighbors this morning.

A little while ago I saw that my island experienced a wind gust of 167 kph, which was even higher than what was recorded on the top of Hong Kong's second highest mountain. That seems unbelievable to me, and I wonder if it's because our island's weather station is 125 ft above sea level. #ragasa

Funeral paper store on Peng Chau island boarded up in makeshift way for Typhoon Ragasa

Businesses in our low lying downtown are doing their best to prepare but….

The island's main commercial area was built right over the tombolo connection, in other words it is at sea level or possibly a bit below it. The shops, restaurants, etc are at serious risk of flood with seas expected to be 2 meters above normal.

As a third floor resident, I'm luckier than any of my island neighbors who live on ground floors. The name of my island is Peng Chau, which in Cantonese means "flat island". You get the idea. It's a tombolo island, created when silt and sand builds up over time and connects two smaller islands.

The worst looks like it will happen around 8am HKT, when ECMWF predicts sustained winds of 70 kph and GFS predicts winds of 108. I'm rooting for the Europeans obvs! The one "good" thing is that the worst winds will come from the east and southeast, where the house is partially protected by hills.

Everything did survive Mangkhut, the previous "big one" in 2018. But Ragasa is stronger, and depending on which source you follow, it will be much closer to HK. ECMWF, the Euro weather modeler, and GFS, the US one, are now estimating it will be 120 km south of my island.

My wonderful part-time 🇵🇭housekeeper Gen has cleared the balcony and secured everything on the roof that's too heavy to move. She is a pro at typhoons. Still I fret. Is the washer going to blow away? Will the glass doors that face the (usually gorgeous) little bay survive the intense winds?

Hong Kong's Typhoon Ragasa couldn't have happened at a worse time for me. I rent a tiny flat that faces the ocean bay on a small island. But right now I'm in the US preparing to fly back to HK soon. My landlord is vacationing in Vancouver. I'm a bundle of nerves and obsessive refreshing of windy.com

Speaking as a resident of a small island who is fearful that my little flat will even be liveable/intact on Thursday I’m finding it difficult to read all these blasé comments about “it’s just a breeze”. It’s a fucking hurricane, dude and some HKers need the time off before hand to batten down!

Yet another echo of things we did a few years ago when museums in Hong Kong began “rectifying” history

Voila! I stepped into a hidden Zohran campaign center busy with volunteers. It was like a political speakeasy. I asked the staffer at the door, what's up? And she told me it was unmarked for security, there have been vandals, threats. And BTW she said, please don't share this address with anybody.

Picked up Zohran posters today. How I got them says a lot about where we're at. The address came by text. When I arrived at the location I was flummoxed--there were no street numbers on any doors. Finally I took a guess and rang one doorbell, got buzzed into a courtyard, another door then, and...

Do we even know what this is?

There's also an ad up for a Classical Music Critic, also sprinkled with key phrases like "digital-first writer" "strong visual, audio and video components".

Since all my writing comes from the tips of my fingers, does that make me "digital first"?

Valhalla? Is that a fascist Wagnerian dog-whistle?

Ying Kee!

Opinion | I’d Be Thailand’s Leader if the System Weren’t Rigged

This is a must-read for anyone who wants to get up to speed on the mess that is Thai politics, written by the man who was overwhelmingly elected by Thais to be PM. www.nytimes.com/2025/09/11/o...

I thought that Hong Kong didn't allow eSims in phones sold here.

I guess I should be happy a new work stream has opened up for freelance writers. But now I understand why so many of the of the articles I come across nowadays in magazines that used to have sparkling writing are boring and tedious as shit.

An ex-colleague has a new freelance gig: ghostwriting for authors in (prestigious) magazines. He does the writing, then runs it through ChatGPT to mimic the authors' style, then copy edits over that version to makes sure the magazine's editors can't detect the AI. How productive is that?