BeijingPalmer
@beijingpalmer.bsky.social
Deputy editor at Foreign Policy, China nerd, gaming nerd, reads a lot
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BeijingPalmer
@beijingpalmer.bsky.social
· Aug 10
(the Great Games Recommendation Thead, part 3, only another 500 plus games to go, you bastards)
201: Brindlewood Bay. Incredible game of improvised deduction where you are the Golden Girls but investigating a Cthulhoid murder cult in a small town through Monk-style quicky/cosy stories.
201: Brindlewood Bay. Incredible game of improvised deduction where you are the Golden Girls but investigating a Cthulhoid murder cult in a small town through Monk-style quicky/cosy stories.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
Labour are just completely committed to this, they are simply all in on becoming repulsive racists on the grounds of some admixture of sincere belief and that Reform would be worse (the latter of which I guess is true, but is true in part because they are shifting the permissibility window outward).
December 10, 2025 at 7:37 AM
Labour are just completely committed to this, they are simply all in on becoming repulsive racists on the grounds of some admixture of sincere belief and that Reform would be worse (the latter of which I guess is true, but is true in part because they are shifting the permissibility window outward).
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
You laugh but he's quoting Shakespeare
December 10, 2025 at 12:40 AM
You laugh but he's quoting Shakespeare
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
just incredible optics here, the president yelling at you about how you should buy less and like it, three weeks before christmas, while standing in front of a bunch of stupefied moronic dipshits holding BIGGER PAYCHECKS signs
Trump: "You can give up certain products. You could give up pencils. Because under the China policy, every child can get 37 pencils. They only need 1 or 2. They don't need that many. You always need steel. You don't need 37 dolls for your daughter. 2 or 3 is nice. So we're doing things right."
December 10, 2025 at 6:13 AM
just incredible optics here, the president yelling at you about how you should buy less and like it, three weeks before christmas, while standing in front of a bunch of stupefied moronic dipshits holding BIGGER PAYCHECKS signs
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
The lawyers still working at places like DoD OGC know exactly what they're doing and need to be disbarred after this
NEW: Pentagon lawyers asked State Dept. if US could send survivors of Trump's boat strikes to a notorious prison in El Salvador. Then Pentagon pushed to have survivors sent anywhere but the US — to prevent any US court cases. Gift link to our @nytimes.com story: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/09/u...
Inside the Pentagon’s Scramble to Deal With Boat Strike Survivors
www.nytimes.com
December 10, 2025 at 2:55 AM
The lawyers still working at places like DoD OGC know exactly what they're doing and need to be disbarred after this
since using Calbiri (easier for visually impaired people) rather than TNR costs literally nothing, this is just ableism for its own sake. these are the kind of people who resent seeing a wheelchair ramp.
Marco Rubio ordered diplomats to return to using Times New Roman font in official communications, calling his predecessor's decision to adopt Calibri a “wasteful” diversity move
Rubio Stages Font Coup: Times New Roman Ousts Calibri
The secretary of state called it a "wasteful" diversity move, according to an internal department cable seen by Reuters.
www.huffpost.com
December 10, 2025 at 1:39 AM
since using Calbiri (easier for visually impaired people) rather than TNR costs literally nothing, this is just ableism for its own sake. these are the kind of people who resent seeing a wheelchair ramp.
Liverpool's fine but the conditions in which the Beatles grew up in the 1950s were far more materially deprived than we think of as England today. Like, my dad is a decade younger, more middle-class, and he didn't live in a centrally heated house till his 20s.
Every shot of Liverpool makes it look like the most miserable place on earth. It seems cold and damp even in summer.
December 10, 2025 at 1:38 AM
Liverpool's fine but the conditions in which the Beatles grew up in the 1950s were far more materially deprived than we think of as England today. Like, my dad is a decade younger, more middle-class, and he didn't live in a centrally heated house till his 20s.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
You have a bunch of spoiled rich kids essentially bundled off somewhere harmless and out of the way and then everyone else we see at the university is kind of just an ordinary schmo. The clique is so absurd because they’re pretending to be somewhere they’re not
December 10, 2025 at 1:31 AM
You have a bunch of spoiled rich kids essentially bundled off somewhere harmless and out of the way and then everyone else we see at the university is kind of just an ordinary schmo. The clique is so absurd because they’re pretending to be somewhere they’re not
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
I think the big difference between The Secret History and Dark Academia is that the university in TSH is explicitly a second rate establishment full of people who couldn’t get into the Ivies.
December 10, 2025 at 1:29 AM
I think the big difference between The Secret History and Dark Academia is that the university in TSH is explicitly a second rate establishment full of people who couldn’t get into the Ivies.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
one of my favorite threads ever
You know, it just occurred to me that I never reposted my old Twitter thread about the stuff I found in my car after it was recovered a month after being stolen. Spoiler! It was stolen by a woman. who left her journal in it.
December 10, 2025 at 12:27 AM
one of my favorite threads ever
a lot of "dark academia" stuff is just the author wanting to tell you that they went to a good school but they're not like those other people there, but I think "The Secret History" really does get at the gulf between idealized humanities and moral reality.
But I don't think it makes you a *morally* better person. It might be one of the ways your morality is shaped or the language you use to express it, but it's a vessel, not the substance. We do not, after all, think of professors of English Literature as an unusually virtuous bunch.
December 10, 2025 at 12:21 AM
a lot of "dark academia" stuff is just the author wanting to tell you that they went to a good school but they're not like those other people there, but I think "The Secret History" really does get at the gulf between idealized humanities and moral reality.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
They cut off her wedding ring. Wanton cruelty, just because. When this is all over all of these people need to go to prison
Susan Tincher, a 55-year-old American citizen, said agents told her in the truck that if she didn’t watch herself “they were going to pull me over to the side of the road and give me this OC,” law enforcement shorthand for pepper spray.
Federal agents arrest citizen observer watching ICE detain neighbors on her north Minneapolis block
Susan Tincher, a 55-year-old American citizen, appears to be the first observer arrested by federal immigration enforcement officers since the agency launched an immigration surge in the Twin Cities l...
www.mprnews.org
December 9, 2025 at 11:53 PM
They cut off her wedding ring. Wanton cruelty, just because. When this is all over all of these people need to go to prison
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
It's fascinating to me that Christian sectarianism continues to limp on north of the border, whereas it's practically extinct in England
December 9, 2025 at 2:21 PM
It's fascinating to me that Christian sectarianism continues to limp on north of the border, whereas it's practically extinct in England
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
“Now I know a lot of you out there in the crowd are probably only on one or two executive boards”
December 9, 2025 at 11:48 PM
“Now I know a lot of you out there in the crowd are probably only on one or two executive boards”
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
Have a hunch this website would have some different takes if it was about a humanities student being corralled into Further Maths
December 9, 2025 at 11:37 PM
Have a hunch this website would have some different takes if it was about a humanities student being corralled into Further Maths
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
"What Swift’s defenders didn’t realize was that they were pushing back against a false narrative that had been seeded and amplified by a small network of inauthentic social accounts. Worse, they were helping to disseminate those bad-faith allegations by earnestly engaging with them."
Taylor Swift's Last Album Sparked Bizarre Accusations of Nazism. It Was a Coordinated Attack
Data analysis from startup GUDEA reveals inauthentic social media network that pushed false narrative about her ties to MAGA world and white supremacy
www.rollingstone.com
December 9, 2025 at 9:06 PM
"What Swift’s defenders didn’t realize was that they were pushing back against a false narrative that had been seeded and amplified by a small network of inauthentic social accounts. Worse, they were helping to disseminate those bad-faith allegations by earnestly engaging with them."
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
HUMANS! If you care about child safety on the Internet, follow my friend Maureen. She's one of the best in the world on this stuff. Her statement below is correct, as is most everything she says.
There are two pernicious trends that have been encouraged here. The casual acceptance of criminal activity shifted away from criminals. And the casual weakening of parental responsibility for child safety. Both are bad, very bad.
December 9, 2025 at 1:54 AM
HUMANS! If you care about child safety on the Internet, follow my friend Maureen. She's one of the best in the world on this stuff. Her statement below is correct, as is most everything she says.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
It’s crazy we built machines that can draw whatever we want, it is also scary
seeing mouthbreathers like this talk about what is a glorified plagiarism and revenge porn generator and describing it like the harnessing of fire is so ridiculous, you deserve to be exorcised from society
You're inventing this from thin air. My view on AI is that it's a genuinely miraculous technological creation. It also has terrifying implications, most notably how it enables people to simply generate whatever evidence they need to indulge their resentments and prejudices - the taproot of fascism.
December 9, 2025 at 11:23 PM
It’s crazy we built machines that can draw whatever we want, it is also scary
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s well known in the U.S. but David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy is a really fun look at literature, teaching, and morality/purpose. Sadly it’s also a record of a vanished golden age of travel funding and conferences.
December 9, 2025 at 11:31 PM
Incidentally, I don’t think it’s well known in the U.S. but David Lodge’s Campus Trilogy is a really fun look at literature, teaching, and morality/purpose. Sadly it’s also a record of a vanished golden age of travel funding and conferences.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
But Brexiteers were just fundamentally disinterested in securing the project’s long-term legitimacy, and now, less than a decade on, it’s a question of when, not if, we rejoin
December 9, 2025 at 10:56 PM
But Brexiteers were just fundamentally disinterested in securing the project’s long-term legitimacy, and now, less than a decade on, it’s a question of when, not if, we rejoin
mankind's oldest foe: theatre kids.
I will remind people on this website (not James, I suspect he knows) for what seems like the billionth time that Joseph Goebbels' PhD was in theater.
there is not any particularly strong evidence that study of the humanities make people good people. the elites of many brutal empires were extremely well-read!
December 9, 2025 at 11:04 PM
mankind's oldest foe: theatre kids.
Reposted by BeijingPalmer
Humanities academics (many) have been so demoralized by assaults on their departments by admins that they think they need to invent some kind of use-case for their disciplines. The humanities are intrinsically worth studying! You don't need those.
December 9, 2025 at 10:35 PM
Humanities academics (many) have been so demoralized by assaults on their departments by admins that they think they need to invent some kind of use-case for their disciplines. The humanities are intrinsically worth studying! You don't need those.
just riffing on this, in 1944 my grandad's friend Paddy, who would go on to become a very distinguished writer, kidnapped a German general in occupied Crete and took him up into the mountains with a resistance team, from where he was sent on to the UK by submarine. Now, up in the mountains ...
there is not any particularly strong evidence that study of the humanities make people good people. the elites of many brutal empires were extremely well-read!
December 9, 2025 at 10:36 PM
just riffing on this, in 1944 my grandad's friend Paddy, who would go on to become a very distinguished writer, kidnapped a German general in occupied Crete and took him up into the mountains with a resistance team, from where he was sent on to the UK by submarine. Now, up in the mountains ...
I'm gonna be honest, I always think this kind of "literature actually teaches you essential skills to be a diving instructor" stuff is a real stretch. Poetic composition is a thing in itself; I do not think it is a particularly good way to learn empathy or communication.
Except, this person lacks to understand the value of poetry and how it might relate to the their desired vocation of being a victim advocate. Poetry teaches empathy, communication, inference, and deciphering the abstract. All of which are integral soft skills necessary for being a victim advocate
December 9, 2025 at 10:07 PM
I'm gonna be honest, I always think this kind of "literature actually teaches you essential skills to be a diving instructor" stuff is a real stretch. Poetic composition is a thing in itself; I do not think it is a particularly good way to learn empathy or communication.
yeah I think in a perfect world education would be free and relatively broad until 21 (though not compulsory after 18) and then you would pay for masters' degrees in specialist topics.
Basically, college has become high school's second act, but with the added fact that students are paying for the classes.
but we've tried to make the undergraduate degree be far, far too many things at once, including basically 'you must be this tall to ride' for a range of jobs that your actual classes have almost nothing to do with.
December 9, 2025 at 9:59 PM
yeah I think in a perfect world education would be free and relatively broad until 21 (though not compulsory after 18) and then you would pay for masters' degrees in specialist topics.