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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 11m

headline may be a little dumb but it's well worth a read.

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 22m

solar panels covering an area 7 times the size of Manhattan on the Tibetan Plateau
www.nytimes.com/2025/10/10/b...

Why China Built 162 Square Miles of Solar Panels on the World’s Highest Plateau

www.nytimes.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 1h

borders have never been more tightly controlled in human history than now, with the help of state-of-the-art technologies www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025...

Border failings in Europe are eroding trust in nation states, warns Mahmood

Home secretary to tell meeting of interior ministers that international cooperation is way to curb irregular migration

www.theguardian.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 16h

to manage the Dept's LinkedIn page I had to re-activate my long abandoned and never used account, thereby discovering the little known (to me) world of academic LinkedIn. very interesting.

Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies @durhamchina.bsky.social · 18h

📝New blog post! Soumya Ranjan Gahir writes about square dancing 广场舞 as an everyday practice that reclaims urban space, asserts gendered visibility in a society that often sidelines older women, and adapts creatively to the rhythms of digital culture.
oddchinaout.wordpress.com/2025/10/10/t...

The Quiet Power of China’s Dancing Women

One summer evening in Chengdu, a video went viral: hundreds of women in sequined tops and trainers filled a shopping-mall plaza, dancing in synchrony to a remixed pop anthem. The clip was shared mi…

oddchinaout.wordpress.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 1d

that was a comment on the politician, not your article:)

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 1d

similar to how Liu Cixin is used in tech-reactionary discourse, here Tolkien is apparently used in Peter Thiel's mythic civilizationism
bsky.app/profile/chen...

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 3d

and? the pursuit of technological and strategic superiority. ensure tech company's loyalty to the military. it's something "bigger", civilizational, world-historical.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 1d

perhaps the less people take sci-fi as political lessons the better
madeinchinajournal.com/2023/12/11/t...

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 1d

perhaps the less people take sci-fi as political lessons the better
bsky.app/profile/made...

Made in China Journal @madeinchinajournal.com · Dec 12

In this essay, @chenchenzh.bsky.social explores how the theories, plot, and characters of Liu Cixin's Three-Body Problem series are employed in Chinese digital discourse to illustrate visions of authoritarian, conservative, and misogynistic politics. madeinchinajournal.com/2023/12/11/t...

The ‘Three-Body Problem’, the Imperative of Survival, and the Misogyny of Reactionary Rhetoric |...

Liu Cixin’s the Three-Body Problem book trilogy is one of the world’s bestselling Chinese sci-fi series, being read and endorsed by figures such as George R.R. Martin and Barack Obama. In Chinese ...

madeinchinajournal.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 2d

interesting discovery... so the "ham" in "Nottingham" or "Birmingham" is not the same "ham" in "Durham". the first group is from Old English "ham" which is homestead. Durham is from Old English "dun" (hill) + Old Norse "holmr" (river island). a river island like Stockholm.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 2d

hate the em dash, but absolutely love the en dash.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 3d

and? the pursuit of technological and strategic superiority. ensure tech company's loyalty to the military. it's something "bigger", civilizational, world-historical.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 3d

commonalities & differences between US techno-libertarians and Chinese techno-authoritarians. the former "the govt should do nothing to hinder tech progress", the latter "the govt should do everything to enable and guide tech progress". both anti-democratic and anti "woke".

Libertarian Thiel and Democrat Karp differ in their political views but share a common aversion to the culture of progressive, woke Silicon Valley, which they believe forces companies to engage in moral self-censorship. For this reason, Palantir moved its headquarters from California to Denver, the capital of Colorado, five years ago.
Karp and Thiel espouse a "techno-libertarian" belief: the government should do nothing to hinder technological progress. In their worldview, the best changes come not from lengthy deliberation or democratic consensus, but from radical choices made by visionary thinkers and entrepreneurs. Thiel, in particular, regularly delivers fierce criticism of what he sees as the conformist culture of politicians and scientists. People who, in his view, behave in a morally"

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 3d

fascinating read on Palantir's ideologues and "cult" culture beyond Peter Thiel (I assume machine translation is pretty reliable with Dutch-English)

NRC @nrc.nl · 4d

Het Westen is superieur en moet altijd winnen, vindt databedrijf Palantir. Het is een van de meest invloedrijke, geheimzinnige en controversiële bedrijven ter wereld. NRC ging langs op het kantoor in Londen. Wat is het wereldbeeld van het bedrijf? buff.ly/494BwOc

Het Westen is superieur en moet altijd winnen, vindt Palantir. Zo kijkt dit invloedrijke techbedrijf naar de wereld

Militaire AI-software: Databedrijf Palantir is een van de meest invloedrijke, geheimzinnige en controversiële bedrijven ter wereld. NRC ging langs op het kantoor in Londen. Wat is het wereldbeeld van…

buff.ly

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Soraya Nadia McDonald @sorayanadiamcdonald.com · 4d

People paid $200 a ticket to listen to Peter Thiel do bog issue antisemitism for four lectures about his belief in the antichrist.

Lots of fools wishing to be relieved of their money, I guess.

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Screenshot text from The Guardian:
He believes the Armageddon will be ushered in by an antichrist-type figure who cultivates a fear of existential threats such as climate change, AI and nuclear war to amass inordinate power. The idea is this figure will convince people to do everything they can to avoid something like a third world war, including accepting a one-world order charged with protecting everyone from the apocalypse that implements a complete restriction of technological progress. In his mind, this is already happening. Thiel said that international financial bodies, which make it more difficult for people to shelter their wealth in tax havens, are one sign the antichrist may be amassing power and hastening Armageddon, saying: “It’s become quite difficult to hide one’s money.”

It’s because the antichrist talks about Armageddon nonstop. We’re all scared to death that we’re sleepwalking into Armageddon. And then because we know world war three will be an unjust war, that pushes us. We’re going hard towards peace at any price.

What I worry about in that sort of situation is you don’t think too hard about the details of the peace and it becomes much more likely that you get an unjust peace. This is, by the way, the slogan of the antichrist: 1 Thessalonians 5:3. It’s peace and safety, sort of the unjust peace.

Let me conclude on this choice of antichrist or Armageddon. And again, in some ways the stagnation and the existential risks are complementary, not contradictory. The existential risk pushes us towards stagnation and distracts us from it.

How does Thiel think Armageddon will happen?
Thiel rarely gives a definitive answer about who exactly the antichrist might be or how Armageddon might come about – a central point across his lectures is that nothing is written in stone or inevitable – but he does give the contours of what a global conflict that could lead to Armageddon might look like.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 4d

thanks! good to see it resonates beyond the Sinophone circle.

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 9d

Some thoughts on Zhongyuan Mandarin - from someone growing up internalizing the stigma associated with our native dialect chenchenzhang.net/2025/10/05/s...

Some thoughts on Zhongyuan Mandarin

On why re-examining our “dialects” is about resisting hierarchies, opposing discrimination, and pursuing linguistic justice, rather than cultural “orthodoxy”.

chenchenzhang.net

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 4d

it's an endless battle

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 4d

my dad brought this custom here while visiting. every time we ate out, he'd find some way to pay away from the table, while pretending to go to bathroom (maybe real too), WITHOUT SPEAKING ENGLISH.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 4d

don't know it's hot but that's every group meal in China

"katy_ward 15h
You know what's hot? When the guy gets up and goes to the waiter to pay away from the table, letting me think he went to the bathroom. Apex flirting right there"

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Jana Bacevic @unsocialtheory.bsky.social · 5d

Good morning, in today's edition of How UK Universities are Becoming More Like the US, but not in terms of quality, research rigour, or internalisation www.theguardian.com/education/20...

UK universities offered to monitor students’ social media for arms firms, emails show

Loughborough, Heriot-Watt and Glasgow corresponded with companies concerned about campus protests

www.theguardian.com

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 5d

the most non-sarcastic pepe bot I've seen. or maybe an AI explain that no one needs is the newest form of sarcasm...

Explain Him Jim @explainhimjim.bsky.social · 5d

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

TheBossRoss @thebossross.bsky.social · 6d

The BBC's justification for platforming Farage beyond the actual significance of his small parliamentary party are his polls. A rather cynical explanation, for he wouldn't be where he is without the constant, uncritical appearances he's given on the BBC. It's a (literally) vicious circle.

65 310 1.2K

Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Michael Berry (白睿文) @bairuiwen.bsky.social · 5d

Yangyang Cheng is one of them most astute, insightful, and sensitive writers chronicling the political, cultural, and technological life of China today. I am so honored that she took the time to read and review these two novels by Fang Fang.

chinabooksreview.com/2025/10/09/f...

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Aya Nassar @ayanassar.bsky.social · 5d

Just out paper which might be of interest to those who work on Urban Geograpy, Geographies of Home, and affective thinking (especially ambivalence).

It is a paper that considers the wonderful Iman Mersal's poetic oeuvre as a form of geography.

academic.oup.com/isagsq/artic...

“Giving up the Idea of Home”: Ambivalent Geographies, Geopoetics, and Resisting Capture in the Cities of the Middle East

Abstract. This paper sits with the geopoetics of the Egyptian poet and writer Iman Mersal to grapple with affective ambivalence towards common objects of d

academic.oup.com

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