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William Martindale

@wijama

Taiwanese-American MCEPA student at UC San Diego. Known as 馬凱威 to the other half of my family. I research conspiracy theories and politics in the Chinese-speaking world. Follow me for bad jokes, stats nerd stuff, and updates on whatever I'm reading.

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03.08.2023
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Latest posts by William Martindale @wijama

For the same $6 trillion cost, you could crush child poverty with a child allowance and free childcare, fix unemployment insurance, do paid family, sick & medical leave, massively boost ACA subsidies, and eliminate child uninsurance with Medicare for Kids.

09.03.2026 18:32 👍 2029 🔁 434 💬 30 📌 12
Preview
Mystery group escorts Chen Yunlin - Taipei Times Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

at the risk of stereotyping my own ancestral home, a man named Chen Yunlin being escorted through Yunlin by dozens of gang members dressed in black is the most Yunlin headline I've ever read

09.03.2026 20:32 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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China's foreign minister calls for ceasefire in Gulf region Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi on Monday ​called for a ceasefire in ‌the Gulf region as soon as possible, stressing that the ​sovereignty, security and territorial ​integrity of Gulf countries shoul...

China’s foreign minister Wang Yi calls for ceasefire in Gulf region – Reuters: ‘stressing that the ​sovereignty, security and territorial ​integrity of Gulf countries should be ⁠fully respected, according to ​statements from his ministry.’

09.03.2026 18:19 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 0

It is absolutely insane that the US appears to have targeted desalination plants first – putting them onto the board. Iran seems to have already retaliated against one in Bahrain. This is one of the most obvious ways this could spiral.

08.03.2026 08:52 👍 3146 🔁 1005 💬 96 📌 43

I thought I was just really tired

08.03.2026 15:41 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

this is how I found out today was the start of daylight saving time

08.03.2026 15:41 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

Over 40,000 #Taiwanese fans and an all-volunteer cheer #band at the Tokyo dome.

The band plays a unique song for each player at the plate.

For example, they play a remixed #Indigenous jingle for #Amis athlete Yu Chang:「那魯one、那魯two、那魯紅不讓」 Naru one, Naru two, Naru win!

www.mlb.com/news/chinese...

08.03.2026 05:50 👍 22 🔁 11 💬 3 📌 1

They're right though. Now that we're being diverted in Iran, it can no longer serve as a diversion to the US

08.03.2026 02:42 👍 21 🔁 4 💬 0 📌 0
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Judge rules Kari Lake unlawfully ran U.S. media agency, voiding layoffs Sweeping layoffs at Voice of America made by Trump appointee Kari Lake were declared void by a federal judge, who said she served unlawfully.

Lawless. www.washingtonpost.com/business/202...

08.03.2026 01:53 👍 13 🔁 3 💬 1 📌 0

they struck the animaniacs

07.03.2026 23:16 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

He is playing the long game. If he gets Iran wrong he gets to write another book in five years time.

07.03.2026 08:47 👍 12 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

I'm sure a million of us would be willing to chip in a few hours to help

06.03.2026 16:08 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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NPC 2026: China to Enshrine Xi-Era Ethnic Policy in New Law China's new assimilationist ethnic policy mandates forging a common Han-centric Chinese culture and identity, while muting minority identity expression.

NEW POST – NPC 2026: China to Enshrine Xi-Era Ethnic Policy in New Law

China's new assimilationist ethnic policy mandates forging a common Han-centric Chinese culture and identity, while muting minority identity expression.

npcobserver.com/2026/03/05/c...

05.03.2026 23:14 👍 4 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0

Not necessarily but yes that is one of the things in this category

05.03.2026 18:25 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

On the same day the US sank an Iranian ship in international waters, we have heard three entirely different answers from the highest Republicans in Washington about whether the US is at "war" with Iran

05.03.2026 06:27 👍 273 🔁 93 💬 14 📌 3

it's not just the hubris of bragging about building the bad thing from the film about how the bad thing is bad, but also the temerity to just lie about the capabilities of what they have built

05.03.2026 05:49 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

it astounds me how often I see ai people go "at long last, I have built the terminator from the hit movie the terminator" and when you look inside what they have built is not the terminator

05.03.2026 05:47 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
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IRGC Destroys Second US THAAD System in Gulf, Wipes Out UAE Radar and $1.1 Billion Qatar Early Warning Shield — Iran Declares Missile Dominance - Defence Security Asia IRGC precision strikes reportedly destroy a second US THAAD system, its UAE radar, and Qatar’s $1.1 billion early warning system, exposing fractures in America’s Gulf missile defence architecture and ...

so Iran has apparently knocked out and destroyed / disabled to some extent two U.S. THAAD batteries

This is a massive deal. Aside from the expense, this is not a weapon system we just have a ton of lying around. You don't replace these easily.

defencesecurityasia.com/en/irgc-dest...

04.03.2026 04:26 👍 4602 🔁 1475 💬 229 📌 282

I have waited for this book for a long time. Healy sheds fresh light on tourism in China during the Mao era, offering a new & rare perspective on foreign relations and the origins of what has become a massive domestic industry + great title and book cover. Congrats @gavinhealy.bsky.social!

05.03.2026 00:32 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0

you're posting on the social network for nerds

04.03.2026 04:34 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
After you became the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, in 2006, your mentor, Jeb Bush, presented you with a sword. What was that about?

Chang is a mythical conservative warrior. From time to time, if there’s a big issue going on, you’d see Jeb say, “I’m going to unleash Chang.” He gave me the sword of Chang.

After you became the first Cuban-American speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, in 2006, your mentor, Jeb Bush, presented you with a sword. What was that about? Chang is a mythical conservative warrior. From time to time, if there’s a big issue going on, you’d see Jeb say, “I’m going to unleash Chang.” He gave me the sword of Chang.

i still find it absolutely fucking incredible that Marco Rubio has a imagined version of Chiang Kai-Shek that he's turned into a ancestor spirit for the GOP

04.03.2026 00:05 👍 653 🔁 103 💬 22 📌 51
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Many Americans hold contradictory opinions on the same policies Our new poll finds question wording can swing opinion by 20+ points on immigration, the budget, and transgender rights. That's a problem for people who use polls to tell politicians what voters want.

New post!
Many Americans hold contradictory opinions on the same policies. Question wording effects can swing opinions by 20+ points on immigration, the budget, and transgender rights.
That's a problem for people who interpret polls for a living.

www.gelliottmorris.com/p/many-ameri...

03.03.2026 13:00 👍 1043 🔁 303 💬 73 📌 141

There's weird people in the comments going "wow it's a sign everyone is poor now" or "wow they're gentrifying poor people food" and I'm just baffled at the concept of gatekeeping putting beef on rice

03.03.2026 07:02 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

I love it when people on tiktok take a completely normal thing and pretend it's a weird trend they made up. Remember when they tried to make "bowl food" a thing

03.03.2026 06:55 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Screenshot of both sides of the printable version of the cheatsheet

Screenshot of both sides of the printable version of the cheatsheet

Screenshot of the web version of the recipes cheatsheet

Screenshot of the web version of the recipes cheatsheet

#tidymodels now has its very first cheatsheet! "Preprocessing data with {recipes}" is now available in Web and PDF versions here: rstudio.github.io/cheatsheets/... #rstats #posit #rstudio

02.03.2026 17:23 👍 48 🔁 14 💬 0 📌 1

hm that's a good point. it's hard to tell whether antisemitism in churches has changed dramatically based on my own observations because I should reasonably expect to see more of it now than when I wasn't doing a political science graduate degree

02.03.2026 04:29 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

also just to pre-empt anyone saying "oh you just think all criticism of israel is antisemitic": this post was brought to you by a good friend who came up to me after church today and told me that israel killed jfk

02.03.2026 03:58 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0

Obviously every time someone does this with me I push back, but I'm only a small influence in these people's lives. I'm really worried about the ideological environment developing in churches, on both the left and right. I wish there was more systematic study of this but I'm not sure where to begin

02.03.2026 03:48 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0

noticing a disturbing uptick of people at church or church events who have come up to me to talk about politics (knowing what I study) and tell me that they think Israel is behind every bad world event. Antisemitism has always been a part of Christianity but it's never seemed this bad to me before

02.03.2026 03:45 👍 4 🔁 0 💬 2 📌 0
A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

A line graph showing NSF grant awards made through 2/27/26 for fiscal year 2026 compared with grant awards for fiscal years 2021-2025.

NSF Update (Awards through 2/27/26)

Directorates to follow

1/10

01.03.2026 14:48 👍 668 🔁 446 💬 28 📌 118