iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 15h

London friends! I'm having a book launch later this month at LSE. Hope to see some of you there! registration: www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/easting-th... details: www.lse.ac.uk/internationa...

EASTING THE WEST:
THEORIZING THE POSTLIBERAL
CONJUNCTURE FROM CHINA

BOOK LAUNCH

DR CHENCHEN ZHANG

PROFESSOR SHAKUNTALA BANAJI
DR KARIN NARITA
DR CHRISTIAN SORACE

CHAIR: DR JASMINE K GANI

**Wednesday 21 October 2026**
**6.15pm to 7.30pm**
MAR 2.08, Marshall Building

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 30/09/2026

this time can you apply to join Schengen (for the first time) as well?? crying in the days and months and £££ spent on applying Schengen visas & waiting in border queues etc

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/12/2024

Liu Minhua was among the over a million people who were relocated for the Three Gorges Dam project. when he had to leave his home forever (which would become submerged), he carried on his back the peach tree from home Li Feng took the photo in 2012, but it was first published in 2019

photograph of a Chinese rural villager carrying peach blossom branches in a basket on his back

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

The New York Times @nytimes.com · 29/09/2026

In the middle of a workday, a Russian drone struck the National Academy of Sciences in Kyiv, setting the top two floors on fire and forcing people to crawl out of windows to await rescue. The attack killed at least two people and injured six.

nyti.ms

Russian Drone Strikes Ukraine’s Science Academy, Causing Fire in City Center

A Russian jet-powered drone hit Ukraine’s National Academy of Sciences, the source of almost all of the country’s major scientific discoveries.

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Alejandra Caraballo @esqueer.net · 27/09/2026

Google finally updated some of its satellite images of Gaza and my god, it's horrific. The entirety of Rafah has been demolished. The majority of Khan Younis is in ruins. Entire towns completely leveled and erased of the map.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 26/09/2026

news from back in May says several universities in Wuhan begun investigating students’ use of VPNs. students interviewed say they usually use it to find/read research papers and use AI tools, but are now worried about disciplinary measure. www.rfa.org/mandarin/she...

rfa.org

武汉多所高校排查翻墙学生被要求签保证书

武汉多所高校近期排查学生翻墙情况，要求说明翻墙用途，并对部分学生进行网络安全与思想教育。受访学者表示，中国高校正在把“翻墙”从网络管理问题，逐渐转向意识形态与国家安全问题。

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 26/09/2026

a document circulating online shows Harbin Engineering University issued disciplinary warning to 20 students for using VPN to visit foreign websites sad to think of the first email sent from China in 1987 that read “across the great wall we can reach every corner in the world”

a Harbin Engineering University notice on giving disciplinary warning to 20 students for using VPN

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 23/09/2026

a nice day to visit beautiful Lund, meeting friends old and new!

yellow historic house with green-trimmed windows and red roses along the front, on a cobblestone street.

A speaker (I) presents to an audience in a library, with a presentation projected on a screen.

A white historic building surrounded by greenery and a lawn, with a bust displayed in front.

A person (I) stands in front of a historic ivy-covered brick building with large steps and arched windows.

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Goldstein (still not a pseudonym) @goldstein.latinsky.app · 21/09/2026

Libraries, famously invented only after Harry Potter came out. In order to store Harry Potter books.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

another word semi-ruined by AI: legibility

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

despite the border drama, looking forward to the Lund event tomorrow! www.ace.lu.se/calendar/eas...

Poster with text that reads: Easting the West, Theorising the postliberal conjuncture from China. Open lecture with Chenchen Zhang, Durham university

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

without me knowing. the good news is I only needed to pay on the spot! (it's 1000 kr, I could make an appeal... but obviously I just wanted to get on with my day). paid and sorted. I was very thankful that the police himself said "this is ridiculous". I said thanks for saying this.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

the border officer didn't tell me what happened, just asked me to wait for the police... after some nerve racking wait, it turns out I owed the Danish police some money because?? I de-registered myself a few days late when I left 4 years ago. then there was a court case pending bc of this, all

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

gosh another nerve-racking border story just happened to me, second only to the time when I was almost refused entry at JFK because I didn't know a particular rule and no one in the UK knew about it either this time I arrived in Denmark, and something flagged up in the system...

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 21/09/2026

note apps: let AI organise the notes for you! me: organising my notes is the point. where's the fun if I delegate that?

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 20/09/2026

I guess there are utilities. but essentially Paper2Agent is doing what Alibaba calls distillation, extracting knowledge from human researchers to feed AI agents. At Alibaba once this is done the human employees can be safely fired. bsky.app/profile/chen...

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 20/09/2026

"Conventional research papers require readers to understand and adapt the paper’s code, data and methods to their work, creating barriers to dissemination and reuse" ok requiring readers to understand is now considered a barrier to overcome www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Reimagining research papers as interactive and reliable AI agents - Nature

Paper2Agent converts research papers into interactive artificial intelligence agents by turning manuscripts, code and data into model context protocol-based tool-invoking systems that reproduce origin...

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 18/09/2026

I'd say they'll generate responses that are an approximation of the prevalent interpretation in the training data (i.e. what's already on the internet and in print publications, obtained in dubious ways), not necessarily what users want to hear. but conclusion is all the same.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 18/09/2026

"... but because they thwart the process that might lead students toward original interpretations in the first place. No matter how you refine your questions, the chatbot will generate responses reflecting what the greatest number of users are likely to want to hear" www.hnn.us/article/ai-i...

hnn.us

AI Is an Anti-Primary Source Machine

Real voices from the past are threatened by chatbots designed to amplify — and ultimately become — the loudest voices in the room.

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Jason Kint @kint.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Eye popping. Court just unsealed Summary Judgment motions in New York Times v OpenAI / Microsoft. Easy to see why the AI companies had so many redactions (pink). Their own people wrote the lede for NYT, the "largest theft of labor in human history"... "more and more substitutive..." /1

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 15/09/2026

"Citizens deemed to have "harmed" China's national security or interests while overseas can also be barred from leaving China for up to three years" big sigh. if you know you know. it's the people you think of from afar and the home that can't be returned to. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

bbc.co.uk

China tightens travel restrictions for citizens

Observers say the new rules will further tighten the Chinese government's control over its citizens.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 15/09/2026

This happened in my hometown Caoxian... global.hk01.com/%E5%A4%A7%E5... A Beijing woman went missing 26 years ago. Her parents passed away in the pain of not knowing where she was. She was recently found in Caoxian, Shandong, completely unrecognisable.

global.hk01.com

北京女32岁被拐山东26年终回家　父母已过世　对比照曝光网民鼻酸

9月8日，疑被拐卖到山东菏泽曹县的“美华大姐”孙美华，在与家人失联26年后，在热心山东博主“初心”的帮助下，由亲哥哥接回北京。事件再次引发内地对

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 13/09/2026

or maybe it's a German thing (sorry couldn't help it...)

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 13/09/2026

don't know if this is an AI thing but I'm seeing more and more manuscripts that go "I'm proposing the concept of Capitalized Initials". however important the concept is (usually it isn't) I don't think there's a need to capitalize the initials.

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Birmingham UCU @birminghamucu.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Please read and share this open letter from staff at risk of compulsory redundancy in Modern Languages at the Uni of Birmingham. It calls for the redundancies to be halted, for the equality impact assessment to be released, and for meaningful consideration of alternatives.

birminghamucu.org

“A national catastrophe” at home: open letter on redundancies

We write as Translation and Interpreting staff at risk of compulsory redundancy at the University of Birmingham, together with the Birmingham UCU Committee. In brief: a University whose Vice-Chance…

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 12/09/2026

a stay-at-home dad: "love and hate. love its wealth, hate its behaviour. The homeland of bandits. Of course I yearn for the bandits' money, but I have some reservations about their behaviour".

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 12/09/2026

In 2011 Phoenix News made this 9/11 10th anniversary special "reexamining Chinese perceptions of the US", where they interviewed many ordinary citizens, students, scholars (incl my former teacher) etc. very interesting to look back (subtitled!) 【911十周年策划《再看中国人的美国观》】 youtu.be/RQwnW1nSaWk?...

youtu.be

凤凰网：911十周年策划《再看中国人的美国观》

YouTube video by 记者易速利

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 12/09/2026

"After a neighboring team was laid off in its entirety, Tang’s team was able to smoothly take over their work by relying on the documentation and work logs they had left behind in the AI Agent. He regarded this as a victory for the cyber mummy".

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 12/09/2026

These knowledge assets can then be further used to train algorithmic models. However, once an employee’s individual value has been extracted and transformed into company property, being laid off becomes almost inevitable."

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 12/09/2026

Alibaba is rolling out something called “distilling”: distilling employees into digital humans, also referred to as “cyber mummies.” it "means capturing employees’ experience, industry insights, business intuition, and so on, and consolidating them into SOPs, digital assets, training materials.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 11/09/2026

emailed a journal today for update on a paper I submitted in June, was told that they made a decision already on 17 July! I never received an email and only found out now... that's really a first for me.

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Hadas Weiss @hadas.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 09/09/2026

Just because the screen is turned vertically doesn't mean the creator becomes any shorter. If two minutes can move you, then you've been moved. If two hours can't move you, you can't ask for extra time".

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 09/09/2026

someone writing short dramas now may turn around and write a feature film. What everyone ultimately has to deal with is people, emotions, and life.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 09/09/2026

Films, long-form series, and short-form dramas will increasingly grow within the same audiovisual ecosystem. Someone who makes films today may make short dramas tomorrow;

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 09/09/2026

filmmaker Jia Zhangke's comment on duanju (vertical short drama) interesting to ponder "been watching hongguo (duanju platform) recently. Whether a story is told in two hours or two minutes is a matter of format, not lineage.

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 08/09/2026

now your job is inflicting suffering on the next generation". 😂 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jiang_Z...

en.wikipedia.org

Jiang Zhuyun - Wikipedia

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 08/09/2026

jobs at Microsoft (Greater China CSO). He's now president and CFO of TAL Education Group, a large tutoring company. what's funny is the user who posted about this has a son studying with TAL. they said "your grandmother made a heroic sacrifice to spare the next generation from suffering, and

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Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️ @chenchenzhang.net · 08/09/2026

when entirely different worlds collide... Sister Jiang (Jiang Zhuyun) was a highly revered revolutionary martyr made a household name by the novel Red Crag TIL her son is a professor in computer science in the US; her grandson also did his PhD in the US, and then came back to China for executive

a poster of Sister Jiang in revolutionary/Maoist style

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Reposted by Chenchen Zhang 🤦🏻‍♀️

Matthew Bradford @matthewbradford.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

“Normally, when there’s some disaster, people are very active, praying and support, and they send goods to the affected area. But this time they’re completely silenced.”

theguardian.com

How the Nepal-Tibet disaster became the latest victim of China’s ‘Clean Internet’ campaign

The online campaign used to focus on tackling cybercrime and hacking but has since expanded to suppress information that differs from official narratives

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