Eric D. de Roulet (should be writing)

Ships in Gulf declare themselves Chinese to dodge attack

This “becoming Chinese” trend is getting out of hand

Let me be clear: I’m glad Kristi Noem was fired. But we still have to abolish ICE.

It’s not enough.

This image is a screenshot of a Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article headline. Here is the descriptive text: WSJ Article: Trump Is Preparing to Fire Kristi Noem Headline: Trump Is Preparing to Fire Kristi Noem Subheader: The Homeland Security secretary’s combative Senate hearing this week was a key factor, advisers say Authors: Josh Dawsey, Tarini Parti, and Michelle Hackman Updated Date: March 5, 2026, 1:05 pm ET Categories: Exclusive, Policy

Firing is not enough. She needs to go to prison for what she's done.

www.wsj.com/politics/pol...

Another day, another thoughtful person here helps make my point for me.

You’ve Never Heard of China’s Greatest Sci-Fi Novel Millions of words. Thousands of authors. The Morning Star of Lingao is barely known outside China—but it contains the secret to the country’s modernization and malaise.

a very good read on the gongyedang/industrial party. since I'm correcting the proofs, I feel very tempted to add this into one of my gongyedang footnotes!
www.wired.com/preview/stor...

New Interview: www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a...

Yeah. And let me also be clear. I’ve never trusted Trump on this, or on the economy, or on keeping us safe in general. You are trusting him on this, though, right? No. You aren’t? I’m trusting the military and our generals. I’m trusting what I understand to be the operation and the people leading it—that is, the generals and our military and our allies. You’re trusting the people leading the operation who don’t include the President? Well, I don’t trust that guy. Yeah. He’s the Commander-in-Chief, right? Sure. Yeah. But I can’t [trust him]. And he’s proven that over the past couple of days, being all over the place, unlike everybody else involved in this.

Lol

Israeli map showing all of southern Lebanon in red with yellow arrows pointing to north of the Litani river

The IDF just ordered the *entirety of south Lebanon* to be forcibly displaced.

They are emptying the land of its population, creating a massive crisis, and will now proceed to further annihilate large parts of Lebanon.

The very nation state of Lebanon is being destroyed.

The cult of efficiency sees value only in the product, and denigrates the process. Which is devastating to craft, and to learning.

Once again I was told at work that I can submit articles, papers, etc into AI and get summaries. If the information an author needed to convey could have been condensed to 2 paragraphs then they would have written 2 paragraphs, and not 8 pages. All thinking is being reduced to bullet points.

A smarter, more detailed takedown by somebody else on this website:

(The lit review sucks as a genre of writing, of course, and some sort of change would be welcome there. But I'd never trust a researcher who can't competently write about the research that preexists theirs.)

My comps were the "write a few papers for us based on these sources" type of comp exam, and they were a terrific reminder of how engaging closely with the material (reading it yourself! writing in response to it!) was an indispensable part of learning it.

I sorta think academics who make some of the claims I read in that blog post should be put on unpaid leave until they can pass a new set of comprehensive exams.

It's been fascinating to see how quickly a number of academics have concluded that using a program to generate a lit review is good enough, as if writing the lit review is merely a chore and not part of the process of building expertise in the subject.

Academics Need to Wake Up on AI - line edits I study immigration and public opinion, not AI. But I’ve spent the last few months watching AI transform my own research workflow [Disowns your agency, not a great start], and I have some things to sa...

with apologies to max read's "editing the new york times": this is a complex topic with a lot of ground to cover, and I think the argument could benefit from some more work to make it as rigorous as possible. so, here are some line edits:

docs.google.com/document/d/1...

I have been a subscriber since, I dunno, since a long time. Note that The Conversation has a multi million $ budget and Made By History partnered with major media outlets and did not pay writers. Contingent, from the start, pays. A model to emulate.

Back to writing, then.

Seeing Chiang (sorry, "Chang") and a free society mentioned in the same sentence is moderately funny, so there's that.

This is made *much* funnier when you realize it’s just Marco Rubio aping a joke from Poppy Bush that he doesn’t understand.

It’s lost multiple levels of context by this point. bsky.app/profile/pmey...

Lessons from the Iraq invasion for Trump's Iran war The parallels aren't perfect, but they tell us something about our domestic politics around war

Wrote a thing about the lessons of the 2003 Iraq invasion for the current situation. tl;dr, the world is a serious place and we're an increasingly unserious country goodpoliticsbadpolitics.substack.com/p/lessons-fr...

A big part of the authoritarian playbook is war. War takes over the news. War blots out criticism. War divides a nation’s people, subjecting those against it to being called unpatriotic. War grants leaders all sorts of emergency powers. War consumes everything else.

We mustn’t let this war do so.

This is disgusting. Rationalizing the bombing of a school that reportedly killed 108 girls.

But since she asked,

"Currently, 161 public schools operate on military installations across the United States."

www.militaryonesource.mil/education-em...

Black and white photo of Marjane Satrapi with the quote: "The world is not divided between East and West. You are American. I am Iranian, we don't know each other, but we talk and we understand each other perfectly. The difference between you and your government is much bigger than the difference between you and me. And the difference between me and my government is much bigger than the difference between me and you. And our governments are very much the same."

Once again.

Extra special for us west coasters

A quick reminder now that things are unfolding as they are in the Middle East that we're gonna see a lot of contradiction and confusion going forward re: information that will be swirling around (ex: Khamenei's alive vs. he's dead).

Check your sources and think twice before you share something.

Discover how marriage, race, and geopolitics intersect in Reform-era China. Join us for a conversation on Post-Soviet Brides in the China Dream with Prof. Elena Barabantseva (@manchester.ac.uk).

📅 March 12 | 11:00–12:30 PM
📍 Buchanan Tower, Room 225

🔗 Register: migration.ubc.ca/events/event...

If you reply to this with a screenshot of a donation I will mail you a postcard with an ink sketch of your favorite pokemon

Let's see if we can raise $10,000 today for red state or national queer orgs. Post proof here in the replies that you donated to a red state or national queer organization and I will share.

Who's with me?

(I can't donate myself because I'm a journalist who covers these orgs)