iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Daniel van Strien @danielvanstrien.bsky.social · 5h

Uploaded a dataset of 98,877 historical newspaper pages (1700s–1940s) to the Hub, each with its original OCR text, word boxes and confidence scores. huggingface.co/datasets/big...

Sample grid of newspapers in the dataset

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Josh Hadro @hadro.bsky.social · 6h

You: "OCR is a solved problem" Me:

A screenshot of a page from The New Hampshire gazette, September 23, 1800, with text going in every possible direction, and brackets, and numbers

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Brendan O’Kane @bokane.org · 17h

crop from the old Mathews dictionary, which I will have an announcement about shortly, for the rare graph 蠧, variant form 螙, meaning “grubs in wood; worms in books, clothes, etc. Used figuratively of corrupt officials."

Words and phrases containing the graph include "rapacious underlings," "to prey upon one's country and injure the people," "hairy caterpillars," "silverfish," "rapacious schemes -- preying on the people," and "to breed weevils, etc."

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Yangyang Cheng @yangyangcheng.bsky.social · 9h

How do digital platforms from Alibaba to Didi navigate shifting politics in China, and is the promise of agency and freedom in e-commerce a marketing myth? I learned so much talking to @lizhiliu.bsky.social and Jack Linzhou Xing for the latest Gateway to Global China @madeinchinajournal.com. Listen⏬

madeinchinajournal.com

Episode 12 | Entrapped by E-Commerce | Made in China Journal

Life before e-commerce can feel like a foreign country. For the ‘Chinamaxxing’ crowd, fresh meals and fancy gadgets delivered to your doorstep almost instantly, at astonishingly low prices, are among ...

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Cambridge University Press Political Science & IR @cambup-polsci.cambridge.org · 28/09/2026

The Co-opted State by Sarah Brierley When politicians control bureaucrats' careers, governance suffers. This book uncovers how career control undermines public service delivery. 📚 cup.org/4pLCHdQ

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Roi Livne @rlivne.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

Please consider donating to the Xiaohong Xu's memorial fund! We are very close to reaching the threshold of endowing the fund, which will allow us to support international students studying the sociology, history, and politics of China. maizeraise.umich.edu/professor-xi...

maizeraise.umich.edu

Professor Xiaohong Xu

Join me and make a gift to Professor Xiaohong Xu

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 27/09/2026

how do people survive doing research and three preps

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Abe Newman @abenewman.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

5/The most scariest part of the interview was the hubris of the engineering mindset. Cars, TV, social media, were not just a solution to a problem but redefined society and in doing so created problems. Engineering lens casts a myopic view that misses the crisis. direct.mit.edu/books/monogr...

direct.mit.edu

An Engine, Not a Camera: How Financial Models Shape Markets

In An Engine, Not a Camera, Donald MacKenzie argues that the emergence of modern economic theories of finance affected financial markets in fundamental way

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Jeff Lockhart @jwlockhart.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

At least where I got my PhD, if I wasn't sure what I found, how it worked, if it was useful or significant, nobody pretended I accomplished anything.

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Dominique Baker @bakerdphd.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Alright. Quant people who have written books, how do you stategize getting feedback on the work? Even 90 minute talks won't allow me to cover all the analysis so conference presentations definitely won't. Do you just visit different universities for 3 years showing a slice of the analysis?

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International Organization @iojournal.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

New from @mnagawa.bsky.social sky.social (@stanfordcddrl.bsky.social) examines how aid affects recipient governments. Using evidence from >600 officials in Uganda, she finds that better-funded donor projects divert bureaucratic effort away from core functions and leave departments more divided.

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Sara Morell @smorell93.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

Come be my colleague! The College of New Jersey's Department of Political Science is hiring for an Assistant Professor in IR. Happy to answer any questions about the job. Please share widely! tcnj.taleo.net/careersectio...

tcnj.taleo.net

Assistant Professor-Political Science

Click the link provided to see the complete job description.

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 22/09/2026

no one who studies the present believes me! the past was full of sickos with their own layout conventions for printed and handwritten material!! it is not trivial to deal with even if "all you want is the text"! which by the way, it shouldn't be!!!

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Comparative Politics @comppol.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Why do revolutions produce sometimes strong yet unstable states after revolutionary victory? Kevin Wei Luo examines patterns of subnational-level state building in Communist China after 1949 in our most recent issue. 📖 Read: www.ingentaconnect.com/contentone/c...

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Victor Ray @victorerikray.bsky.social · 21/09/2026

It's the last day to comment on the Department of Education's proposed accreditation changes (until 11:59). This is a continuation of the administration's attempts to exert political control over univerities. Please take a minute to comment. The @alliancehighered.bsky.social has templates here:

allianceforhighered.org

Public Comment Regarding the Education Department's Proposed Rules for Accreditation

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value plus discounted @akhilrao.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

existence of pseudoscience implies existence of pseudoengineering

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 19/09/2026

the great Bluesky wars about if Mao was good were not what I had on my 2026 bingo card just gonna say we learn the answer to this question in my “politics of China“ class 🙂‍↕️

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 18/09/2026

do any of my theory / sociology heads know the story of what killed functionalism? not *why* they critiqued functionalism; I know that. I want to know who took down parsons in the pages of the ASR or theory and society or whatever?? no one ever cites a piece or anything when talking about it

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Amanda Weiss @amandaweiss.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

🚨 New Working Paper! 🚨 Do voters *like* local prisons? Are prisons that good for the economy? After years of data collection (+ using a novel estimator?!), @nottone & I find new prisons: • Reduce Republican incumbent vote shares 1-3pp • Decrease per cap. incomes >$2,500 osf.io/dnwke 🧵👇

Abstract for the paper "The Electoral Effects of U.S. Prison Construction" by Ottone & Weiss: From 1980 to 2000, the United States opened over 400 prisons, a rapid expansion of carceral capacity mirroring the punitive turn in public policy and public opinion. Yet few studies have examined the impact of prison construction on nearby residents and their political behavior. We develop a theoretical model tracing how prison openings affect economic, attitudinal, and electoral outcomes in surrounding communities. Us- ing modern difference-in-difference methods and a novel county-level dataset covering forty years of prison openings, we find that prison construction decreases county-level vote share for Republican candidates, especially if Republicans represented the county during prison construction. Drawing on analyses of economic outcomes and prison bond measure support, we argue that voters sanction issue-owning Republican candi- dates for negative economic externalities and turn against funding for prisons. These findings challenge conventional wisdom about the political economy of prisons and have implications for how we understand contemporary expansions of carceral capacity.

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Will Lowe @conjugateprior.org · 17/09/2026

imho the Foucault/Hacking crowd are right, there isn't really a statistics orientation until we decide to construct it out of statistics behaviour.

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 17/09/2026

tips for readings on accountants and (especially) *auditors* from history / sts angle? trying to make sure I am not missing sth big things on my radar: - trust in numbers - audit cultures - post-computer stuff want more: - numbers and 'control' (?) - public admin history (?) - pre-computers 🗃️

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Erin C. @erincikanek.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Every week the Studio wants a different pilot of a different kind of show. There is a Big Name Guest Star. Chaos ensures. Kermit has to go back to the drawing board for next week.

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 12/09/2026

being the dumbest person to ever use a computer is sometimes miserable but it is also sometimes very funny

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 12/09/2026

humbled by physical media again today. last time it was a disk being unreadable for weeks, despite much engineering (had a smear on it. cleaned it and it worked first time). this time? i/o errors. some kind of DRM?? no. usb-powered disk drive was browning out. switched ports, completely fixed.

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 11/09/2026

reviewers in my head: this boob -- this absolute nimrod, this dabbler -- has clearly not even bothered to read the small-print-run collection of papers on this topic from the oct. 1988 meeting sponsored by the liaoning organization department. unserious! reject!! and so:

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Jon Green @jongreen.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

pretty big problem for these LLM companies if the stance on privacy is actually "we won't use your data/logs* without your permission *unless you're doing something our internal teams think is really cool" cims.nyu.edu/~tristanb/st...

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Bhumi Purohit @bhumi.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

🚨 Job Market Candidates 🚨 studying politics and gender/women/sexuality: I want to feature your paper on a substack (this one genderpoliticsresearch.substack.com)! Take a couple of minutes by September 15th and send me your JMP info here: forms.gle/MDZY52C1pxgS... #GenderSky #polisky

genderpoliticsresearch.substack.com

Gender & Politics Research | Bhumi Purohit | Substack

Politics, Gender, and related topics. Click to read Gender & Politics Research, a Substack publication with hundreds of subscribers.

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 07/09/2026

i feel like there's no middle in an intro comparative syllabus. either you teach the detail and it's impossible to get under 36 weeks, or you don't and it only takes 6. grad proseminars are closer to the latter because they can assign so much reading and assume a lot. how do people teach intro??

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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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Reposted by Mike Thompson-Brusstar

Zeyi Yang 杨泽毅 @zeyiyang.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

I'm very disappointed to learn that WIRED had shut down Made in China, the newsletter my editor Louise and I created together. We published 52 issues in the past year, broke a ton of exclusives, had immense fun, and built a voice that truly care about China, the good and the bad.

A screenshot of the story titled "Why Everyone Is Suddenly in a ‘Very Chinese Time’ in Their Lives"

A screenshot of the story titled "Chinese Drivers Are Using Tiny Plastic Heads to Fool Tesla’s Autopilot Safeguards"

A screenshot of the story titled "Africa Is Buying a Record Number of Chinese Solar Panels"

A screenshot of the story titled "A Wave of Unexplained Bot Traffic Is Sweeping the Web"

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 04/09/2026

“admin kpis for delivering new and timely programming“ theory of universities continues to be undefeated

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 04/09/2026

ok bluesky. collecting candidates for the most viscerally affecting clip of video that conveys the feeling of being in a revolutionary moment. documentary/film ok. asking because most 18-19 year olds have not (yet) screamed political demands in unison with tens of thousands of people before, yknow

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 02/09/2026

why would I finish my syllabi when I could read primary sources about how the Marxist theory of value influenced macroeconomic calculations in the 1980s due to different accounting standards?

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 02/09/2026

definitely useful to complicate simple ideas about recycling. I do also think there’s a tyranny of what can be measured easily that makes me uneasy; yes, “we can always plant more trees,“ but where will they be planted? How will we measure the opportunity cost of that planting? Genuinely tricky!

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 01/09/2026

is it not just that "defund science" is the consequence of "punish universities [which happen to conduct science]"? obv. also all institutional trust also going down. so maybe not. but seems plausible to me?

democrats continue to have more confidence in scientists than republicans (although even republicans have >65% "net trust")

7 in 10 americans now say US higher education is going in the wrong direction (up from 56% of americans in 2020, which was down from 61% in 2018)

across a range of areas, few americans given the US higher education system high marks

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Mike Thompson-Brusstar @mthompsonbrusstar.com · 31/08/2026

what I wouldn't give for a 1980s/1990s 中国名人录

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Yuzhou @baiy.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

There have been several major East Asian librarian positions opened up this summer at major public and private institutions across the US. I'm helping CEAL maintain a webpage, where we publicize many such job postings. Please bookmark and share it: www.eastasianlib.org/newsite/cate...

eastasianlib.org

Jobs – CEAL: Council on East Asian Libraries

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Jake Grumbach @jakemgrumbach.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

My paper w/ @robmickey.bsky.social & @dziblatt.bsky.social--on how Black migration via the Great Migration led northern cities to replace mayors with appointed city managers--has found a home at Journal of Historical Political Economy (JHPE) ungated page proofs: drive.google.com/file/d/1bFea...

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China Law Translate / Jeremy Daum @chinalawtranslate.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

This article very clearly lays out the wide range of goals under the umbrella of Foreign-related Rule of Law, The title aside, it explains it as part of a deliberate strategy to create legal status and infrastructure paralleling the US's. www.foreignaffairs.com/china/chinas...

foreignaffairs.com

China’s Legal Weapon

Beijing’s quest to challenge America’s legal hegemony.

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