Lukas Messmer

My prediction is that someday fairly soon we will wake up to find Chinese astronauts walking on the Moon, and the entire country will absolutely freak out about falling behind in space.

Opinion | We Warned About the First China Shock. The Next One Will Be Worse.

Important piece from @davidautor.bsky.social & Gordon Hanson about the next "China shock" and how to deal with it. #EconSky
www.nytimes.com/2025/07/14/o...

Thailand’s judiciary is flexing its muscles, but away from PM’s plight, dozens of activists are at the mercy of capricious courts Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra has been suspended from office. Meanwhile, leading activists languish behind bars on ‘lèse majesté’ offenses.

Important to keep an eye on what is occurring in Thailand at present

#Trump’s #tariffs on #China aren’t a simple “win” or "loss" for American trade policy—they have a multifaceted impact on China, affecting its economy and preferred political narrative in ways many might not expect. A brief 🧵:

1/11

Maroussia Lévesque uses the term “analog privilege” to describe how the wealthy avoid being subject to & penalized by algorithmic decision making models. You know what rich people also do? Send their kids to private schools where they have low student-to-teacher ratios & aren’t forced to use GenAI.

Aktueller Screenshot des Trump-Tickers, den der Schweizer „Tagesanzeiger“ führt.

Stell dir vor, der Präsident des wirtschaftlich und politisch mächtigsten Landes der Welt ändert jeden Tag seine Meinung, oft sogar mehrmals am Tag. Dann müssten die Tageszeitungen einen Ticker nur für die Furz-Ideen dieses Präsidenten einrichten. Stell dir das einmal vor.
#Trump

All praise for @chinadigitaltimes.net aside, let me say that it makes me absolutely f-cking furious that they have to put their bowl out for $10K.

It's a sum that is absolutely inconsequential in comparison to the value CDT provides.

It's 1/4 year kindergarten tuition at a Beijing int'l school.

A collage depicting blimps, planes, drones, and ships trawling the sea and sky for digital devices and information.

NEW: A ChinaFile investigation into China's powerful, but leaky, internet censorship system at locknet.chinafile.com
1/21

A year ago I'd have been able to venture an answer to this, but I've since learned that the Outsider Shock Bar can be as low as "there is food in China," so now I just don't know where to start.

The owner of Twitter sends out 100 right wing propaganda tweets every single day and the algorithm is set up so that every single person on Twitter has to see every single one of these tweets. Now here’s another piece about Blue Sky’s ideological diversity problem.

Opinion | Is This Trump’s Mitterrand Moment? The French President saved his government by giving up socialism. It’s a precedent for tariffs.

THREAD: “When Mr. Trump imposed his tariffs in the first term, President Xi Jinping retaliated with some restraint and sent a delegation to negotiate a trade deal.” www.wsj.com/opinion/fran...

Trump Presses China to Make Tariff Offer to Calm Trade War President Donald Trump called on China to reach out to him in order to kick off negotiations aimed at resolving the escalating trade fight between the world’s two largest economies.

I wonder which chapter of Art of the Deal covers begging, lol

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

1/4. On the White House’s theory, if they abduct you, get you on a helicopter, get to international waters, shoot you in the head, and drop your corpse into the ocean, that is legal, because it is the conduct of foreign affairs.

Screenshot of a post from Stephen Miller's twitter account, @StephenM "You have been watching the greatest economic master strategy from an American President in history." 3:29PM, 4/9/25, 487k views, 2.2k comments, 4.5k retweets, 26k likes

This is how Kaganovich talked about Stalin.

Don’t overthink this.
He’s asking for bribes.

Maintaining Acceptable Water Pressure in Showerheads By the authority vested in me as President by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, it is hereby ordered: Section 1.  Purpose.

These EOs are just slightly longer social media posts from a deranged mind.

I used to envy my colleagues who work on human rights issues in the US, because they have intellectually sophisticated arguments to make, unlike those of us who work on China — the CCP is often violating rights in the most unambiguous way, there isn’t much to“argue.” Welcome to the club, US folks!

Ich: arbeite seit 15 Jahren zum Faschismusbegriff, schreibe Bücher, halte Vorträge, bin auf Fachkonferenzen, bin up to date mit der gesamten Fachliteratur, Gesprächspartnerin für Medien.

Random man: Also eigentlich verwendest du den Faschismusbegriff nicht richtig, lass mich ihn dir erklären ☝️

MYANMAR EARTHQUAKE

What we know:
- 7.7 scale quake, 10 km deep recorded in Mandalay, Myanmar at ~ 13.20pm BK time
- felt in Thailand as far as Bangkok, buildings swaying
- images and footage of damage

What we don’t know:
- extend of damages
- no. of casualties

Bluesky CEO: imagine a 'world without Caesars' Jay Graber dunks on Mark Zuckerberg without mentioning his name.

the feminine urge to

Man, journalism was easy in Tintin’s day!

🧵THREAD: Why did Thailand's parliament fail to even meet to reform the constitution this week? As usual, it's complicated and not only about law but also political ****housery between factions. But above all, it's a legacy of the last military coup.

A break down of a breakdown.

How Popular YouTubers Pushed Young Male Voters Toward Trump How podcasters like Joe Rogan and Logan Paul turned young men, a once apolitical demographic, into a massively powerful voting bloc

Young men voted Republican at the highest level in 20 years because of YouTube brainwashing by right wing podcasters.

And no one with money gives a shit about it.

I wish people like me could get through somehow to the donors www.bloomberg.com/graphics/202...

There have been many articles in which journalists mull over the allegedly „mysterious“ world view people like Musk and Thiel hold. There’s nothing mysterious about it. They endorse a fascist, techno-authoritarian, anti-democratic world view, which is deeply misogynistic and racist. That’s it.

Theravada Buddhism has acknowledged a huge range of sex/gender identities for millennia. Some truly amazing options in the canon.

It was only in the ‘30s/40s, in thrall to the West, that Thai politicians tried to binarize gender. The binary was a contempo capitalist thing, a tool for the state.

The Political Thought of Xi Jinping by Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung review — what does the Chinese leader believe? Xi Jinping has loudspeakers broadcasting his speeches across 300,000 villages in China. But is this more than just an ideological vanity project?

There is no better UK critic of non-fiction than @yuanyiz.bsky.social, whose reviews are always worth reading. This is a very good review of a book that is very much worth your time, even though as Yuan says, it's not a particularly enjoyable read:

#Indonesia's elections are massive. 204 million people are voting in two days. The last rallies were on Saturday and filled stadiums. The current frontrunner is Prabowo Subianto.

NIEMAND WILL MEHR ARBEITEN!!!!!