Threads has become a Chinese speaking haven for users from mainland, Taiwan and HK alike -- reminds me of early days Clubhouse! Viola Zhou 's new story takes a look at how Taiwanese youth or using it to mobilize for the protest against the parliament reform.

Here, in service of a description of the global psychonaut created by transnational logistics networks and digital platforms, I confess to sprinkling α-Methyltryptamine onto chicken tenders, and writing poetry in a Xuzhou net bar for girls back home... thebaffler.com/salvos/sinopha…

Is it just me or everything on Depop is like a size S,, out of all the places you can shop second-hand/vintage Depop definitely feels the most skewed towards smaller sizes

End of an era

Talked with Tony the charismatic store sign salesman you’ve probably seen on Instagram or TikTok. He explains where he got his American accent, and the secret of selling a lot of signs as a factory comedian: restofworld.org/2024/chinese-f… via Rest of World

New: A hidden TikTok AI feature not available in the US is being used by 4chan to make hardcore porn and is now seen as one of the best porn-generating AIs that exists. Bytedance turned all image generations off when we asked them for comment 404media.co/4chan-is-using…

Old and new friends! I’ll be in sf for the next two weeks. I’m always writing about fun stuff in the intersection of AI/social/internet innovations, and looking to share thoughts on China/media at large. Hit me up!! Let’s walk around, grab coffee and have mini discourses 🫧

Great insight into not just VC, but the general lack of "patient capital" in China following the exit of American VCs. Robert Wu noted that local/provincial government funding has become the closest alternative, which aligns with much of my reporting.

Tencent and Alibaba now together back almost all of China's LLM startups. You don't see this kind of funding frenzy since, ugh, bike-sharing days. bloomberg.com/news/articles/…

Great feature by MasterPa on the "last-mile" delivery hellscape behind Temu's rise, published by LatePost, which has consistently been publishing some of the best original Chinese journalism. Reposting for Chinese readers!

Mind-blowing, straight-out -of-a-crime-movie level of details on how smugglers skirt U.S. ban and get #Nvidia chips into China, by Qianer Liu $NVDA theinformation.com/articles/nvidi… via The Information

you got your green card through marriage what are you talking about 😅