Dang Nguyen

Dang Nguyen

@digitaldang.bsky.social

researcher of the sociotechnical, writer of everything else www.dangnguyen.digital

1.3K followers731 following7.2K posts

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Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

"Nowhere is this audience fragmentation clearer than in tech media, which is increasingly dominated by largely sycophantic media outlets owned by the decisionmakers themselves...

Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

... A new generation of tech news consumers have turned their backs on the likes of Wired and The Verge in favor of self-congratulatory or friendly podcasts, newsletters, and X accounts."

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Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

There is something quite extraordinary about the US president simultaneously admiring Japanese warriors, learning to wrestle from them, being flattered by Japanese aristocrats, defending Japanese national dignity against Californian racism, and building a navy capable of confronting Japan.

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Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

Here's an interesting question though: how much of this amounts to a transformation in Roosevelt's understanding of manhood, rather than particularly skilful diplomatic affirmation of values he already held?

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Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

They actively supplied cultural materials, flattering comparisons and models of Japanese manhood that Roosevelt could recognise as compatible with his own.

Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

The extraordinary example is Kaneko Kentarō, Roosevelt's former Harvard classmate, who supplied him with Nitobe Inazō's Bushidō. Roosevelt was enthralled. In 1906, the Japanese emperor even presented Roosevelt with a suit of Japanese armour.

Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

Klose takes the US–Japan diplomatic crisis of 1906–1907, sparked by San Francisco's segregation of Japanese schoolchildren, and shows how Theodore Roosevelt's response was shaped by his admiration for Japanese martial culture, especially bushidō, discipline, physical strength and imperial ambition.

Dang Nguyen
@digitaldang.bsky.social

But Japanese diplomats knew exactly how to appeal to Roosevelt's masculine self-image. They weren't simply recipients of American racial and gendered classifications.