Kevin Schoenmakers
@kevinschoenmakers.bsky.social
450 followers 390 following 46 posts
Freelance reporter and editor in New York City // Formerly at Rest of World, ANP, Sixth Tone // [email protected] // 宋楷文
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
felicityhannah.bsky.social
This article manages to name her husband before it names… her.
Article reads:
Woman named as Archbishop of Canterbury in historic first 

The 63-year-old archbishop-designate is married to Eamonn Mullally, with whom she has two children. Originally from Woking in Surrey, she was the UK's chief nursing officer from 1999 to 2004.
kevinschoenmakers.bsky.social
I wrote about the first panda's brought to the US, almost 100 years ago.
chinabooksreview.com
In 1928, the eldest two sons of President Theodore Roosevelt set out to capture or kill a giant panda. Their hunting trip accidentally contributed to the cause of wildlife conservation.

Read Kevin Schoenmaker's review of Nathalia Holt, "The Beast in the Clouds":
chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/02/p...
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
roxanegay.bsky.social
It’s always interesting when politicians say hate and violence have no place in this country. It was founded on those principles.
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
evanurquhart.bsky.social
Oof. From M Gessen, writing about the nervousness they feel drawing parallels between our time and the Nazi era.

"The comparison seems straightforward ... And yet something in the transformed landscape of this country tells me I’m not supposed to say so."

www.nytimes.com/2025/09/21/o...
But what makes this parallel feel most apt is how nervous I am about drawing it. The comparison seems straightforward: The person who was murdered was a representative of a hateful ideology, the person thought to have killed him was a deluded young man who may have tried to oppose that hatred in the most destructive manner imaginable. And yet something in the transformed landscape of this country tells me I’m not supposed to say so.
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
cleanpowerdave.bsky.social
The story of 2025 is China's solar growth🤯
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
davidzipper.bsky.social
Forgot one:

“Demand that your local leaders build complete networks of sidewalks and protected bike lanes.”
npr.org
NPR @npr.org · 13d
In 2024, 7,100 pedestrians were killed on the road, and in recent years, more than 1,000 cyclists have been hit and killed annually. Safety experts explain how bikers and walkers can stay safe.
8 walking and biking safety tips that just might save your life
In 2024, 7,100 pedestrians were killed on the road, and in recent years, more than 1,000 cyclists have been hit and killed annually. Safety experts explain how bikers and walkers can stay safe.
n.pr
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
ebakerwhite.bsky.social
If BuzzFeed News still existed we would’ve pubbed this in a heartbeat

Quiz: Who Said It? Trump Comedy Crackdown Chief Brendan Carr or CCP Head Censor Zhang Rongwen?

(and then all the quotes would be Carr)
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
violazhou.bsky.social
Not long after DeepSeek R1 launched, I discovered that my mother had started using the chatbot as her virtual doctor.

I worried about her reliance on AI. But over time, I realized Dr. DeepSeek was offering something no human in her life could.

restofworld.org/2025/ai-chat...
My mom and Dr. DeepSeek
In China and around the world, the sick and lonely turn to AI.
restofworld.org
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
beijingpalmer.bsky.social
excited for America to get its first 'dissident rumor mill claims the leader has died' experience
kevinschoenmakers.bsky.social
Trump hasn’t been on the front page of The People’s Daily for at least a week now
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
yalee360.bsky.social
Every year the Natural History Museum in London honors the best wildlife photography from around the world.

See a selection of this year's finalists.
The Best Wildlife Photography of the Year
e360.yale.edu
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
cleanpowerdave.bsky.social
NEW: The first evidence of a solar take-off in Africa☀️✈️

x33 rise in Algeria solar panel imports in the 12 mths to June 2025, compared to previous 12 mths.
x8 in Zambia
x7 in Botswana
x6 in Sudan
x3 in each of Liberia, DRC, Benin, Angola, Ethiopia

🧵
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
alexludoboyd.bsky.social
What does Americans read about China? Conspiracy theories.

All are really about America. But China, its agents and its sympathizers, is presented as the cause of the myriad social ills — addiction, violence, poverty and disease — that plague American society.

chinabooksreview.com/2025/08/19/n...
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social
NEW from me: Clean energy growth helped China’s CO2 emissions fall 1% year-on-year in the first half of 2025, extending a declining trend that started in March 2024. Power sector CO2 fell 3% as growth in solar power alone matched the rise in electricity demand.
creacleanair.bsky.social
🇨🇳 📰 NEW | Analysis: Record solar growth keeps China’s CO2 falling in H1 2025

🌿 ☀️ CO2 output of the nation’s power sector fell by 3% in H1 2025 as growth in solar power alone matched the rise in electricity demand

@laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social w/ @carbonbrief.org

www.carbonbrief.org/analysis-rec...
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
Reposted by Kevin Schoenmakers
edzitron.com
Loved this piece from Cal Newport in the New Yorker about what if AI doesn't get much better than it is today, and not just because he quotes me
www.newyorker.com/culture/open...
I recently asked Marcus and two other skeptics to predict the impact of generative A.I. on the economy in the coming years. “This is a fifty-billion-dollar market, not a trillion-dollar market,” Ed Zitron, a technology analyst who hosts the “Better Offline” podcast, told me. Marcus agreed: “A fifty-billion-dollar market, maybe a hundred.” The linguistics professor Emily Bender, who co-authored a well-known critique of early language models, told me that “the impacts will depend on how many in the management class fall for the hype from the people selling this tech, and retool their workplaces around it.” She added, “The more this happens, the worse off everyone will be.” Such views have been portrayed as unrealistic—Nate Silver once replied to an Ed Zitron tweet by writing, “old man yells at cloud vibes”—while we readily accepted the grandiose visions of tech C.E.O.s. Maybe that’s starting to change.
If these moderate views of A.I. are right, then in the next few years A.I. tools will make steady but gradual advances. Many people will use A.I. on a regular but limited basis, whether to look up information or to speed up certain annoying tasks, such as summarizing a report or writing the rough draft of an event agenda. Certain fields, like programming and academia, will change dramatically. A minority of professions, such as voice acting and social-media copywriting, might essentially disappear. But A.I. may not massively disrupt the job market, and more hyperbolic ideas like superintelligence may come to seem unserious. Continuing to buy into the A.I. hype might bring its own perils. In a recent article, Zitron pointed out that about thirty-five per cent of U.S. stock-market value—and therefore a large share of many retirement portfolios—is currently tied up in the so-called Magnificent Seven technology companies. According to Zitron’s analysis, these firms spent five hundred and sixty billion dollars on A.I.-related capital expenditures in the past eighteen months, while their A.I. revenues were only about thirty-five billion. “When you look at these numbers, you feel insane,” Zitron told me.
Even the figures we might call A.I. moderates, however, don’t think the public should let its guard down. Marcus believes that we were misguided to place so much emphasis on generative A.I., but he also thinks that, with new techniques, A.G.I. could still be attainable as early as the twenty-thirties. Even if language models never automate our jobs, the renewed interest and investment in A.I. might lead toward more complicated solutions, which could. In the meantime, we should use this reprieve to prepare for disruptions that might still loom—by crafting effective A.I. regulations, for example, and by developing the nascent field of digital ethics. The appendices of the scaling-law paper, from 2020, included a section called “Caveats,” which subsequent coverage tended to miss. “At present we do not have a solid theoretical understanding for any of our proposed scaling laws,” the authors wrote. “The scaling relations with model size and compute are especially mysterious.” In practice, the scaling laws worked until they didn’t. The whole enterprise of teaching computers to think remains mysterious. We should proceed with less hubris and more care.
kevinschoenmakers.bsky.social
I was interviewed about protected intersections on the Outspoken Cyclist podcast: outspokencyclist.com/2025/08/show...
kevinschoenmakers.bsky.social
Ha, that’s a cool concept!