Am I the only person who remembers that Duterte threatened to declare war on Canada because someone shipped a container full of garbage from Canada to the Philippines? npr.org/2019/04/24/716…

This situation is barely comprehensible. Like, should-this-journal-even-exist, how-can-libraries-be-paying-money-for-it incomprehensible. The editorial board of this journal contains some of the most distinguished scholars in the field.

Normal in Vancouver as well, maybe even more widespread than in SF? I don't think this practice aroused the same controversy in Vancouver as it has in SF.

One of my crank opinions is that no academic journal should commission a review of fewer than 2000 words for any history book. 600 words = rehashed chapter outline. 800 words = did they really read whole book? 1200 words = can still wiggle out of giving a clear judgment.

Chiang Kai-shek was the first person who could have told you this. (Maybe a case to be made for Feng Yuxiang as well...)

Just learned that MS Word offers geopolitical advice. (Here "Dongbei Pingyuan" is not equivalent and crazy for English prose; "Manchuria" vs. "NE China" is complex choice based on period/topic.) Mostly can't believe MS would voluntarily touch third rail of geographic name advice.

Reminded of Russian historian who returned from first conference with PRC colleagues and said to me, with genuine bafflement, "Do they really think the Russian Far East was stolen from China? Don't they know that it was originally seized from Russia by the Kangxi emperor?!"

Fascinating services pitched to academics. Aside from ed-tech vultures, people have offered to (for a fee) make me a Wiki page (allegedly this would show off my stature), make my book into a comic, and translate it into Russian. And ac dot edu promises to up my citation stats.

And now for something completely different: visualizingcultures.mit.edu/cause_of_the_r…

Debate Mao: What they have done to our country by allowing these Four Pests to come into our country….In Bengbu, they're eating the wheat. The sparrows that came in. Eating the sorghum. They're eating -- they're eating the grains of the people that live there. And it's a shame.

1989 youtube.com/watch?v=MPZ3cO…

I think I'm supposed to post at least once or twice when a nice review of my book comes out, this one in the AHR academic.oup.com/ahr/article-ab…

It's alive! My book now has a webpage on the University of California Press (is on Bluesky) website: ucpress.edu/books/in-the-g… Will be available open access in April 2025!

To go on a more specific rant about how idiotic this is, based very narrowly on my own field (I expect pretty much any academic could offer a perspective from their own field that would bolster the basic point about how terrible this is):