@bamiller.bsky.social
Assistant Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania. I specialize in Chinese politics, authoritarian politics, and computational social science methods. (they/them) http://blakeapm.com
‘China’s gaokao factories and America’s college-industrial complex are not accidents. They are the logical outcome of a global system that has mistaken education for investment and human life for capital.’
@izading.bsky.social on China’s university entrance exam.
www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
there's a moment in PARADISE LOST where Satan arrives in Eden and realizes Hell isn't a place; it's a thing he carries within him and it'll follow him wherever he goes. and i think about that when i see these awful rich men whose monstrous wealth has enriched them not at all
11.11.2025 06:31 — 👍 9008 🔁 2134 💬 77 📌 60As described in our piece, this figure shows the spikes in protest activity in Trump-leaning counties (above 0 on the y-axis) vs in Harris-leaning counties (below 0 on the y-axis) over time across his two administrations. Since April, the modal protest county voted for Trump.
16.10.2025 20:17 — 👍 82 🔁 38 💬 1 📌 1Every accusation is a confession. This is political indoctrination—the exact kind they accuse the left of.
23.09.2025 22:14 — 👍 237 🔁 73 💬 1 📌 0
Ta-Nehasi Coates is doing a lot of things with this essay, but one of the most important is fearlessly using examples of anti-trans hate to describe Charlie Kirk's politics.
The contrast between his choices and those of other writers for major legacy outlets is revealing.
Four Al Jazeera staff, including reporter Anas Al Sharif, were killed in an Israeli attack on a tent for journalists outside the main gate of Gaza's al-Shifa hospital aje.io/onll19
10.08.2025 23:00 — 👍 3758 🔁 2426 💬 143 📌 299It's incredible that this is real.
01.08.2025 22:54 — 👍 88 🔁 20 💬 2 📌 0
On one of the most unbelievable satellite images I've ever seen, showing hundreds of Palestinians surrounding aid trucks north of Rafah.
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/29/w...
Another example of how Chinese information control can be clumsy and prone to popular backlash. The readership of boys love is largely queer-affirming straight women… and the state is revealing its distasteful homophobia and repressive tactics to a demographic unlikely to encounter them otherwise.
10.07.2025 06:22 — 👍 5 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0Quite a strong final statement: "Descriptive research is important and it is a pity that the general obsession with causal estimates disincentivizes researchers from attempting to publish careful and detailed description."
09.07.2025 10:19 — 👍 88 🔁 30 💬 4 📌 2Absolutely incredible turnout for Budapest Pride! So proud of all the organizers, including some old friends, who estimate hundreds of thousands— major embarrassment to Orban
28.06.2025 17:23 — 👍 38566 🔁 8080 💬 501 📌 799King 👑❤️❤️❤️
28.06.2025 18:19 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I entered the human rights field 15 years ago, I thought I could contribute to make China a little bit more like America, but it has turned out that America is increasingly like China. It's so depressing.
24.06.2025 22:20 — 👍 24 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 0
Congrats to Jesse Singhal and the NYT for achieving a more brutal and vigorous retreat on civil rights than Reagan dancing on the graves of American martyrs in Mississippi to launch his presidency.
You certainly will be memorable
Holy crap. The US-UK trade deal is a blank sheet of paper and only Trump signed it. (Genuine screen grab).
17.06.2025 00:13 — 👍 4048 🔁 1112 💬 207 📌 130
Remarkable.
MSNC: "I want to reiterate this has been 100% peaceful."
Seconds later, LA County sheriffs start firing on the crowd.
Yet again, "law enforcement" deliberately escalated.
Any person in uniform wearing a mask and refusing to be properly and reliably identified should be assumed to be the same kind of murderer we’ve seen in Minnesota.
14.06.2025 15:42 — 👍 5237 🔁 1563 💬 67 📌 45
“Trump is using military forces to stop a protest — I want y'all to consider what kind of government it appears to be when every time we exercise our democratic right to protest, the military is deployed against us.”
Doechii at the #BETAwards
View of the Fudan University campus in Shanghai
Amazing view from my room in the School of Journalism’s hotel on the Fudan University campus!
05.06.2025 13:26 — 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Almost every day I read about some new development that just stuns me with its combination of cruelty and short-sightedness. This is one of them.
31.05.2025 12:19 — 👍 76 🔁 26 💬 2 📌 1
Nature ran a piece finding that 25 million people could die as a result of ending USAID. This puts Trump and Musk in the category of the most brutal leaders of the 20th century in terms of unnecessary lives lost.
www.nature.com/articles/d41...
In which I have the sinking feeling of boredom. www.nytimes.com/2025/05/28/o...
28.05.2025 12:19 — 👍 180 🔁 73 💬 17 📌 20
In anti-authoritarian struggles, criticizing the regime for their blatant corruption is often one of the most important ways to mobilize the public and break through to regime supporters.
The Trump regime is the most corrupt in US history—it’s worth repeating ad nauseam
CNN politics headline: Trump threatens to withhold federal funding from CA over trans athlete
Imagine the brain rot required to threaten to defund our most populous state, with a GDP larger than all but 3 countries on the planet, over a single teenager participating in long jump.
27.05.2025 17:44 — 👍 193 🔁 53 💬 11 📌 7
Table 8 from the paper (page 20)
LOL we are so cooked…
25.05.2025 14:37 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Screenshot from the paper showing AI agent behavior. Full text on page 28 of the paper linked
Hilarious paper tasking LLM agents with running a fictional vending machine business.
Spoiler: they are often comically incompetent.
One emails the FBI to recover $2 in fees, one gives a vendor a “one second notice” for a refund or face “thermonuclear legal annihilation” arxiv.org/pdf/2502.15840
