iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Reposted by David Mimno

We've been super busy the past few months getting out some research on the computational analysis of film, so I've put together a page with the highlights. people.ischool.berkeley.edu/~dbamman/fil... Some things to call out: 1/7

people.ischool.berkeley.edu

Computational Analysis of Film

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Marco @mcognetta.bsky.social · 12h

🚨 [Token][ization] Paper Alert 🚨 Tokenization is a wildly understudied area of language modeling despite it having effects across all of NLP. Over the past ~8 months, 32 (!) tokenizer researchers put together the most comprehensive survey of the field. Check it out!

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Isabel Silva Corpus @isabelcorpus.bsky.social · 14h

In 2023, Change.org integrated an AI-assisted writing tool into their platform. We found that access to the tool changed platform trends in petition text, but that outcomes (signatures and comments) did not improve... Excited that this paper is out, check it out! 🔗: www.nature.com/articles/s41...

nature.com

Introducing AI to an online petition platform changed outputs but not outcomes - Nature Human Behaviour

Corpus et al. examine how the introduction of an AI writing tool impacted Change.org petitions, finding that it increased petition homogeneity but did not improve petition outcomes.

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Hoyt Long @hoytlong.bsky.social · 15h

If you're at #COLM2026, come check out our poster for "Spoiler Alert" (arxiv.org/abs/2604.09854). We ask why LLM fiction is so bad at holding narrative tension, and create a metric to measure tension in short stories. What improves LLM fiction on this metric, it turns out, is narrative planning.

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

An updated version of Scott Enderle's Topic Modeling Tool is now available here: github.com/mimno/topic-... Beta testers welcome!

github.com

Release v2.0.0 · mimno/topic-modeling-tool

Full Changelog: https://github.com/mimno/topic-modeling-tool/commits/v2.0.0

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Has anyone made Yes / Yes to all / No USB foot pedals?

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Reposted by David Mimno

Alison Babeu @alicatlibrarian.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

The Perseus Digital Library has been hard at work on Minimum Viable Perseus (Perseus MVP). Designed as a static site and heavily inspired by the beloved but faltering P4 (and its awesome users), please check out our efforts here (sites.tufts.edu/perseusupdates) and try it out: beta.perseus.tufts.edu

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Sparsity is back! Sparsity is everywhere in language, but managing it requires overhead. For the last ~15 years it was faster to just do the dense operation, knowing most of it was useless. That sparse operations work is a huge shift in the "do something clever" vs. "spend more money" tradeoff.

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

"Will no agents rid me of this turbulent priest?"

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Reposted by David Mimno

naitian @naitian.org · 24/09/2026

If you haven't yet registered for TADA 2026 on October 5th (day before COLM), registration is open to the public! Detailed schedule forthcoming, but lots of fantastic posters and talks. We even have a second half-day of lightning talks scheduled! tada2026.eventbrite.com

tada2026.eventbrite.com

Text as Data 2026

A leading forum for interdisciplinary research on the study of politics, society, and culture through computational analysis of documents.

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 22/09/2026

Models like Talkie-1930 sound like voices from the past. If they could reliably speak from specified historical vantage points, researchers might also use them to simulate the past. But how reliable are they? Today we release a benchmark answering that question for English contexts 1831-1930.

Free-text evaluation of answers to character modeling and constrained generation questions. This is just one of several scores Chronologic-EN can produce; we focus on it here because it's both the hardest test and the one most relevant to simulation of the past. Frontier models reach 72%; Talkie-1930 is stronger than several larger competitors, but not at the frontier by this measure. Note that this score has improved ~45% in the last two years, but still falls perceptibly short of ground truth.

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

It's possible for Jev/Laya/Decision Models to be not that big a deal as tech and massive as a new paradigm. Here's why I'm really excited from an NLP history perspective (thread)

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scott b. weingart @scottbot.net · 22/09/2026

Join my team! Help us figure out how to be as careful stewards of today's born-digital archives of state as we've been for physical archives over the last 200 years. Seeking experience in digital archives/collections/preservation, or related cultural heritage work. Due 10/6. Up to $91k.

jobs.virginia.gov

Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 - Richmond, Virginia, United States

Title: Born-Digital Collections Coordinator #00220 State Role Title: Library Specialist III Hiring Range: Commensurate with experience up to $91,080 Pay Band: 5 Agency: The Library of Virginia Locatio...

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Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

This seems to be the most popular alternative to jev. Laya: Multilingual, non-autoregressive System 1 decision model. huggingface.co/convaiinnova... Laya Repo: github.com/NandhaKishor... Laya MLX: huggingface.co/aac6fef/laya... Laya MLX Repo: github.com/mizorewww/la...

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Gordon Pennycook @gordpennycook.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

We have a new paper on AI debunking that includes a bunch of interesting data on various "epistemically suspect beliefs". Check it out!

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Melanie Walsh @mellymeldubs.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

We are hiring for several positions in the UW Information School, including a tenure-track position in Library and Information Science. Please share with anyone interested in these areas! Deadline October 30. Job: apply.interfolio.com/192127

Screenshot of job ad that reads: "The successful candidate will be expected to contribute to our Library and Information Science (LIS) research, with areas of relevance including, but not limited to:

Libraries - Academic, Digital, or Public

Librarianship - Leadership, Innovation, or Education

Information Technology - Ethics, Public Interest, and Justice-Oriented Approaches

Data - Archives, Public / Open, and Humanistic or Scientific Applications

Artificial Intelligence - Public Interest, Library or Cultural Heritage-Centered, Open-Source Applications in Information Institutions "

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Richard Jean So @richardjeanso.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

Prospective PhD students: if you work on computational humanities, cultural analytics and/or cultural AI, pls apply to Duke English! We're recruiting in these areas & you'd join a vibrant community. Candidates with training in both lit studies + CS/sciences esp welcome. Email me if any questions!

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Reposted by David Mimno

Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 21/09/2026

The #DataSittersClub is back... but the news is Terminal 💀. You'll survive, though, with @alyssavi.bsky.social new DSC little tl;dr #4: Navigating the Terminal for the First Time. It's the honest, practical, funny guide to the Mac Terminal that you need before you get down to work with other tools.

datasittersclub.github.io

Navigating the Terminal for the First Time

Yikes!

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Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 21/09/2026

Part 2 of the #DataSittersClub back-to-school spree is @alyssavi.bsky.social DSC little tl;dr #5: What's the Deal with Topic Modeling? Topic modeling is one of the first methods people hear about with digital humanities, but really... what's up with it? And how are you supposed to do it? And when?

datasittersclub.github.io

What's the Deal with Topic Modeling?

Are Topics Real?

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

A university founded in the Middle Ages in a city that centers itself around a Medieval castle does not see a need to study Medieval History

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

whoa, the claude code update is suddenly much more aggressive about going off and doing things without asking

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Maria Antoniak @mariaa.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

We're hiring in Computer Science at the University of Colorado Boulder! ☀️⛰️ Machine learning and NLP people, please apply!

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Reposted by David Mimno

danah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

PhD students (& new PhDs): I'm hiring a postdoc at Cornell (Ithaca) to conduct a novel study at the intersection of political economy and tech. Applications are due Oct 16. There are a LOT more details in the job ad so make sure to read it thoroughly: academicjobsonline.org/ajo/jobs/32502

lnkd.in

This link will take you to a page that’s not on LinkedIn

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

The silence from industry in the face of concerted attacks on US competitiveness has been disgraceful. Will this finally wake them up? Or will they just offshore all skilled work? And yes, this is a constitutional crisis if the executive can apply a “ridiculous fee” veto to any legislation.

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

Killer AI is sufficient, but not necessary

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Advait Deshmukh @advaitdeshmukh.com · 10/09/2026

1/7 In 1941, Borges imagined an impossible novel that follows all narrative branches at once. Today, we can observe chatbot users exploring narrative possibilities as they repeatedly edit story prompts. In our COLM 2026 paper, we studied this branching exploration via the WildChat dataset. 🧵

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Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (LZI) @dagstuhl.de · 10/09/2026

It is time for possible Dagstuhl proposals again! Proposals can be submitted between October 15 and November 1, 2026. For links to guidelines, more details on the process, and important dates see www.dagstuhl.de/en/institute...

dagstuhl.de

Call for Proposals (Deadline November 1, 2026)

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Reposting since a lot has happened this week

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 10/09/2026

Something that never made sense to me about H.P. Lovecraft was the Cthulhu priests' motivation. Why would they want to awaken him? Now at least I understand: "we have to, because what if someone less responsible awakened Cthulhu?"

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Dallas Card @dallascard.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Job alert! We are hiring in the area of privacy and technology, with a particular interest in how privacy intersects with AI. This position is via the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellowship Program, which we would expect to lead to a tenure-track position within UMSI. www.si.umich.edu/people/facul...

si.umich.edu

Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Professor - Privacy and Technology | umsi

Job posting for the Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow/Assistant Professor - Privacy and Technology position

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Cars are a surprisingly good model for public acceptance of AI. Some people love them and tinker with them. Others hate and reject them. Most find their own car useful. But everyone viscerally hates everyone else's car: traffic, parking, dangerous driving, pollution, etc.

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Daniel van Strien @danielvanstrien.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

OCR for Japanese manga, Swedish handwriting or Arabic print? There’s a growing range of OCR models on @hf.co: VLMs, dedicated text recognisers and complete OCR pipelines. I’ve gathered 41 models into four collections, with short notes to help you choose: huggingface.co/collections/...

huggingface.co

OCR on the Hub - a davanstrien Collection

Curated OCR models for documents, languages, handwriting and text in images. Browse four collections with short practical notes.

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

The For You feed from @spacecowboy17.bsky.social is to BlueSky what the tidyverse is to R. Fundamentally the same, but takes the experience from "usable" to "enjoyable".

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mr. TIM @timkellogg.me · 07/09/2026

it is sooooo cool that we have an actual explainable algorithm here on bsky

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Ines Montani 〰️ @inesmontani.bsky.social · 05/09/2026

Exactly 10 years ago today, Matthew and I sat at the notary's office overlooking the city of Berlin, and signed the founding documents of our company, @explosion.ai. So much has happened since and we got to witness the field evolve, "AI" become mainstream, and hypes come and go. (1/8)

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The idea of a machine that mechanistically generates true theorems goes back to Hilbert 100 years ago. People lost interest when Gödel proved it was impossible to generate all of them (true things outnumber proofs) but that never implied the machine wouldn't produce a whole lot of them.

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Chris Forster @cforster.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

What works does the r/classicliterature subreddit consider "classic"? This post gives you an answer (and some media ecological theorizing for good measure): cforster.com/2026/09/redd... With thanks to @mellymeldubs.bsky.social & @mariaa.bsky.social, whose work on Goodreads I borrow from.

cforster.com

The Reddit Classics

Reflections on the most frequently mentioned works in the /r/classicliterature subreddit.

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Daniel van Strien @danielvanstrien.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

A 15.9M-parameter specialist OCR model outperforms many VLMs hundreds of times larger. On a 2,165-page historical eval dataset, Kraken PP-OCRv6 ranks #4 on reading CER and #1 when long-s, ligatures and case are preserved. huggingface.co/spaces/fineb...

Plot showing parameters vs performance. Kraken is top left.

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Mikko Tolonen @tolonen.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

We are hiring! Permanent position for a University Lecturer in Digital Humanities at the University of Helsinki. The application period is open and closes on 3 October 2026: jobs.helsinki.fi/job/Helsinki... Please read the job description carefully and feel free to spread the word widely.

jobs.helsinki.fi

University Lecturer in Digital Humanities

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

Remember that LeCun was one of about 5 people in the world who thought neural networks were worth studying in the 2000s

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Kate Donahue @kpaxdonahue.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

I’m recruiting students this upcoming cycle at UIUC CS. I’m excited about Qs on societal impact of AI, especially human-AI collaboration, agentic teams, and benchmark design. Also, check out my grad seminar on these topics! tinyurl.com/cs598aisinth...

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Jonathan K. Kummerfeld @jkkummerfeld.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

We are recruiting postdocs in AI at Sydney! This is through the new Centre for Sustainability, AI and Life Sciences, with flexibility to work with a range of academics. Please share with any students you know who are close to graduation! usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/en-GB/USYD_E...

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com

Research Fellow

Full time, 2 year fixed term position. Located on the Camperdown Campus, University of Sydney Opportunity to contribute to the recently established Centre for Sustainability, AI and Life Sciences (SAI...

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Between their origin and when Backstreet came back (alright!), where were they?

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spacecowboy @spacecowboy17.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

A common misconception about Bluesky is that it "has no algorithm". In fact it has many algorithms - custom feeds. You can choose which one to use. What does it look like? You can replace the built-in fyp called Discover with a custom For You that runs on my gaming pc in 23 seconds:

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David Mimno @dmimno.bsky.social · 22/08/2026

“Oh another angle of the humanoid robot hitting a barrier and catching fire… No, it’s a completely different humanoid robot hitting the same barrier and catching fire” If this event is an advertisement for legislation banning humanoid robots it’s a success

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LSE Methodology @lsemethodology.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

💡 We're hiring for an Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science Read more and apply before 11 October 👉️ www.lse.ac.uk/methodology/...

LSE Department of Methodology hiring — Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science; applications close 11 October 2026; apply at www.jobs.lse.ac.uk and follow @lsemethodology.

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