Lightnews — Scholar-powered news

BeijingPalmer

@beijingpalmer.bsky.social

39K followers 650 following 21K posts

Deputy editor at Foreign Policy, China nerd, gaming nerd, reads a lot

Posts Media Videos Starter Packs

Pinned

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.

6 9 160

Reposted by BeijingPalmer

Dmitry Grozoubinski @explaintrade.com · 3h

There was certainly something recently which monopolised all public debate and paralysed all policy initiative in the UK for the better part of a decade, and I dont think it was trans rights.

Rachel Cunliffe @rmcunliffe.bsky.social · 5h

"While Britain was redefining what a woman is, China was building five nuclear reactors," says Kemi Badenoch.

I cannot be the only person curious about how these two things are related

3 46 280

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

no no it's a quidditch term.

3 9

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

he spends like half the year in Switzerland at health clinics too

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

see the thing is I would be interested in reading a well-argued, properly researched critique of the porn industry and the impact of widespread porn! but nobody ever seems to do one

2 47

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

stuff like this is exactly the kind of thing - not quite trade prices, but significantly cheaper than academic - that academic presses should be doing, though - www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain

Mixed Signals: Alien Communication Across the Iron Curtain, Rebecca Charbonneau is a historian of radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (or SETI) and is considered a rising ...

www.politybooks.com

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

(though I'm biased, my best friend from college is their publicity director)

2 2

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

they've got a pretty big range though.

1 1

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

they've been trying to move into trade publishing, which generally I support from academic presses, but, uh, perhaps not this way

1 6

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

his daughter was an aspiring rapper and influencer mostly known for posting pictures of herself on piles of cash

2 47

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

this is a good article about the politics of a country you probably don't know anything about but also this photo of the 93-year-old president and his wife is mildly insane. his daughter has also just condemned him and renounced her family wealth on social media.

foreignpolicy.com/2025/10/07/b...

Cameroon’s Predictable Election Will Produce Unpredictable Chaos

At nearly 93, Paul Biya is all but guaranteed a victory—but has no successor.

foreignpolicy.com

4 9 82

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 8h

if you were wondering - www.politybooks.com/bookdetail?b...

Pornocracy

Pornocracy, The triumph of the pornocrats is made more sinister by society’s widespread acceptance that “all men watch porn,” the denial of its devastating harms, and a lack of political will to curb ...

www.politybooks.com

4 31

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

look, I've seen IWTV Season 2, I am aware that Samuel Beckett was actually a vampire who eventually became a member of Daft Punk

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

I mean I assume that most trans people prefer sex in the gender they choose!

1 4

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

time for the truly insane political coalitions.

John Oxley @joxley.jmoxley.co.uk · 9h

Think an underpriced 2029 scenario is "ungovernable mess".

Rob Ford @robfordmancs.bsky.social · 1d

Four parties within a 5 point swing of first place and five parties on 12% plus.

This would be pure chaos under first past the post.

3 2 67

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

I suggest a simple search for "Harry Potter" and "felching". Because of her strict content control policies *all* Harry Potter pornography available was written by J.K. Rowling

3 28

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

depressing how easily I was able to guess a British author writing about sex was a massive terf lunatic.

8 4 150

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 9h

I could see Tolkien liking early Who for sure - all those long historicals.

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 14h

I know her work but didn't know this one.

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

it's a sobering thought that Taylor Swift could have lived long enough to see the First Clanker Rebellion.

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

another strange thing is to consider how long people *could* have lived. Anne Frank was three years younger than Queen Elizabeth II!

1 2 71

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

But curiously, hotels seem to have very rarely required cash deposits of any kind - as long as you presented with the right class markers, anyway. Now you can still sometimes pull this off, paradoxically, at very very expensive hotels, as Anna Delvey showed, but not at ordinary ones.

4 1 75

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

a social history question: how did hotels cope with the risk of guests skipping out on bills - sometimes weeks worth! - in a pre-credit card or reliable ID age? I've read multiple accounts in biographies of people doing this (and heard them from older family members).

17 4 130

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

this sounds like an *incredible* bad play. I hope it was a musical.

Uphold Karl Polanyi Thought @highestmarx.bsky.social · 15h

This one was called Final Analysis and it culminated in a distraught Freud, having unwittingly talked Hitler out of suicide, turns to the audience and says “My God, what have I done?” Blackout. Curtain.

3 5 44

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

poetrysociety.org/poems-essays...

1 6

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

yup, shot down behind enemy lines, nearly starved in the POW camp because Germany was running out of food, one day the guards simply disappeared and they walked out, he and a camp buddy walked to Denmark and took a ship home.

2 18

BeijingPalmer @beijingpalmer.bsky.social · 15h

hence this Turtledove short. reactormag.com/the-eighth-g...

The Eighth-Grade History Class Visits the Hebrew Home for the Aging - Reactor

Some people will tell you that world-class fame is better than living to a contented old age. Other people disagree. One of those other people might possibly be the protagonist of this tale by Harry T...

reactormag.com

7 13 87