iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 09/10/2026

Old, tired: LLM-generated book spam about exclusive book club featured author deals or goodreads reviews, at a price New, confusing: LLM-generated book spam purportedly from real authors, asking to start a conversation about "creative process" and, when ignored, following up with nonsense

Screenshot of followup email caught by spam filter, which purports to be from a famous UK mystery novelist, re my book about a 19th century Confucian moralist and his works. It reads:
" I hope you are well.

I wanted to gently follow up on my earlier note. I know you are busy, so no pressure at all if you are unable to respond.

I remain very interested in your creative process and in the reflections you share in the book. If you have a moment, I would still love to hear your thoughts on whether you began with a particular period of your life, a desire to revisit themes from your first memoir, or a wish to capture the quieter reflections of your retirement years.

Thank you again for your time and for the work you share with readers."

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 08/10/2026

MOOD From Burke, with McDermott, “The Proliferation of Reference Books, 1450-1850” <The Book Worlds of East Asia and Europe>

"Already in the eighth century Chinese readers complained of such a problem (indeed, the holdings of the imperial library in the sixth century appear to have far surpassed those in any later century), and by the sixteenth century literati were writing of the need to burn most of the new publications for being unworthy exercises in vanity."

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

So I bought Arthur’s too, because this is midcentury academic couple goals. She didn’t even type it for him!

Dedication page of Arthur’s book: For MARY CLABAUGH WRIGHT

From his acknowledgments: “my wife, Mary Clabaugh Wright, served as expert but indulgent critic.” Followed immediately after by: Mrs. Mary H. Johnson typed the several drafts with patience and skill.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Yesterday’s used bookstore find, now in place on my office shelf next to Mary’s. Mary C Wright was the first woman tenured in A&S at Yale, and while my book kind of tells the opposite story to hers, hers is one of the foundations it is based on nonetheless.

My hand holding a copy of “Buddhism in Chinese history” by Arthur F Wright in front of a shelf full of books at the used bookstore

A photo of where the book is now on my office bookshelf - not where it should be thematically but it’s next to Mary.C Wright’s important book “The Last Stand of Chinese Conservatism”

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 06/10/2026

Came here to say the same thing! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gwoyeu_...

en.wikipedia.org

Gwoyeu Romatzyh - Wikipedia

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 05/10/2026

Even in the mid semester doldrums my students are giving me life. Questions after Civ lecture today: 1: Professor can I show you this meme about the Yellow River I found online? 2: Professor can I tell you about this weird thing I bought at a flea market that reminded me of class? 😍

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 02/10/2026

Filing cabinet poetry and a career trajectory

Photo of the folders way at the back of my filing drawer. The back most one, labeled “Grad school” has fallen open to some article I printed out way back when, with the word “hubris” written at the top of the page for reasons I no longer remember. Folders closer up are labeled COMPS, UChicago grad syllabi, and Review & Tenure

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Screenshot the above post and add it to the pdf title page 😆 Happy to save any researcher some money, since I didn’t write the book looking to make any!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

Oooh thank you! But you don’t even have to buy it, download the free pdf from my publisher. They were amazing about supporting open access publishing!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Surprised and excited that the panel my weird little paper is part of was accepted for #AAS2027. See you in Boston, everyone! Bonus, now I hopefully get to visit my book on the book floor, just one year late. I hope my publisher brings a copy!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Preview offering to help me create an event based on this phrase in the commentary in an 1816 edition of three-character re-imagining of the Sacred Edict. Great question! When exactly should I be practicing filial piety? Do I have time in my busy day?

Screenshot of a selection of a page from this early 19th century Chinese text with Preview having automatically identified the rhetorical phrase "一時一刻" as 1:15, and offering me the options to: Create Event, Create Reminder, or Open Calendar...

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

In Amsterdam last year, my travel companion asked me to stop reading Dutch aloud as if it was English, so I just silently giggled to myself for the rest of the trip and frequently thought of how all my Dutch ancestors must be ashamed of me. Not very Confucian!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 13/09/2026

At a nearby gem and rock show and no, these are not “donuts,” these are 璧！ Alas, there were not bins of 琮。 (The vendor had a lot of other objects still in their original Chinese packaging, which made this even funnier for a tiny segment of nerds visiting today’s show (total population: 1, me))

Bins of teensy stone discs, labeled as “donuts” sold for $1 each

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

We also started looking at a newly acquired collection of 20th century 木魚書, which are so fragile they’ll stay in Rare Books as they’re processed and added to the library catalog. Love these modern covers!

Cover of one thin volume with an illustration of a Chinese woman holding up the name of the publisher 五桂堂 in bubbles, with light rays shining up from the one foot she’s balancing on like a dancer.

Covers of two more little volumes that are illustrated with an embracing western couple and also include advertisements for medicines

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Yesterday my grad seminar on Ming-Qing book and print culture met at the library’s Rare and Distinctive collections to get hands on experience with real Ming-Qing books and materials.

Photo of students looking at a table filled with different types of Qing books in cases

Librarian showing students East Asian printing materials including woodblocks from Tibet, Japan, ans China, and Chinese wooden moveable type

Photograph of a page from an early 1600s reference work that some reader in the past marked up heavily with highlights and notes.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Read "Draft No. 4" in the New Yorker (2013 iirc) next, it helped me so much as a writer!!!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Updated my assigned primary source readings for the Chinese Civ lecture on early Confucianism and, for different reasons than the first time I read him (when I was 18), I find myself nodding along with Xunzi. Hutton translation, p. 93.

Pic of a paragraph from Xunzi, Chapter 10, “Enriching the State” which I couldn’t resist including in the selected readings. It says: “To profiteer from the people without profiting them is not as profitable as first profiting the people and then profiteering from them. To work the people without showing them care does not produce as great achievements as first showing them care and then working them. To profit the people first and then profiteer from them is not as profitable as profiting the people and not profiteering from them. To show the people care first and then work them does not produce as great accomplishments as showing them care and not working them. He who can profit the people and not profiteer from them, show the people care and not work them, will win over all under Heaven. He who first profits the people and then profiteers from them, first shows them care and then works them, will preserve his altars of soil and grain. He who uses the people without profiting them, works them without showing them care, will endanger his state and clan.”

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Alan Owlport 🦉 🎃 @alanallport.bsky.social · 29/08/2026

Dear William, I recently had the privilege of discovering your work “Hamlet” and the way you weave themes of mortality, revenge, and the human condition into such a compelling narrative really stood out to me. We would be honored to feature you in our upcoming “Voices That Matter” book club …

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 25/08/2026

Fred Chin’s story is poweful. I’m so grateful that he was available to show us around Jingmei Prison and tell us about his survival when I visited in June with a study tour.

Fred Chin standing in the room where he was sentenced to death for a crime he was tortured into confessing to

Fred Chin telling his story in the cell where he was confined for over a year until his sentence was commuted into a decade at Green Island.

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aohsu @aohsusometimesy.bsky.social · 20/08/2026

You’ve all seen fake “Confucius say” quotes. Now it’s time for real confucius quotes with false attribution

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Pulled a bird divination card (from @mariapopova.bsky.social) this morning just because it’s been a while, and lovely as ever

Photo of the card I pulled, laying against my knees and with the rest of the deck and the case they come next to it. In the background, because I’m sitting outside on my patio, my research assistant cat sits on a pillow absorbing the bright morning sunshine.
The poem on the card, printed on top of an image of a Jay, reads:
the great work of being
consists of learning
the shy words
of the parts we conceal
continually constructing
more and more
beautiful sentences
to render the whole
more and more true

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Min Chao @wordsfromtaiwan.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

Taiwan's Indigenous peoples are the original owners of this land. Yet new settlers referred to them as "savages" and "mountain compatriots." Name rectification came in 1997 through a constitutional amendment. Aug 1 declared Indigenous Peoples' Day in 2005. Siraya just recognized as the 17th tribe.

Indigenous peoples are the original owners of Taiwan. Nevertheless since more than four hundred years ago, they have been reigned by foreign regimes and given different names. For instance, during the rule of the Qing Dynasty, indigenous peoples were called “fan”, meaning barbarian. Qing used the term ‘cooked/tamed/civilized fan’ for those who had pledged their allegiance, and ‘raw/wild/uncivilized fan’ to define those people who had not submitted to Qing rule. During Japanese rule, the Japanese government referred to them as ‘fan’ or ‘Takasago-zoku’. During the early period of Chinese Nationalist Kuomintang(KMT) rule, the term ‘shanbao’, meaning ‘mountain compatriots’, was invented. All these terms are discriminatory, stigmatized and invented by the rulers. Indigenous peoples themselves did not have the right to determine their own names.

https://www.cip.gov.tw/en/news/data-list/673CBF7B0C3D2700/2D9680BFECBE80B6221E4CC7D09E1357-info.html

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Maria Popova @mariapopova.bsky.social · 01/08/2026

The final card from "An Almanac of Birds: 100 Divinations for Uncertain Days." Find the full set and the story behind them at almanacofbirds.org

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I know this mental pain all too well lol

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Yes!! Finding a name/place in a digitized book and then getting it from a library or online database is why searching Google Books has previously been useful for me (and hopefully still can be?!) But all the cuneiform results I got earlier were just too depressingly funny, it's not usually that bad!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Nope, because I was just momentarily curious when I spotted her name while taking notes on the larger book the poems are in. But if I do decide to research this collection of short strange tales, I'll need to look into all the poets in the opening verses! And will look there, thanks for suggestions!

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Yes, I know there are scholarly biographical databases that I could access (maybe not though, my library doesn't have a ton of funding for subscriptions!) where I might track this woman down. But this was simply a moment of idle curiosity, where once I could use Google for the first step. No more.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Searching Google Books, btw, which is often my work around these days to at least hope to find other sources discussing what I want, showed me her name in a ton of texts actually written in cuneiform because OCR has read it as Chinese.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

I usually don't engage with those results when I accidentally forget to block them, but this time I had to bite. Guess what, of the three points it gave as corrections only one linked to a source, and I closed the window rather than waste more water by requesting more sources which may not exist

Screenshot of the question I asked, and the beginning of the search engine AI response:
me: "sources for the above information?"
it: "I must apologize-there was an error in my first response. In traditional Chinese literary history, there is actually no historical record of a female playwright or poet named
"Meng Jue" who went by the alias "Xiaoban Nushi" or wrote a
collection called Huaying.Ji.
I hallucinated a blend of distinct literary fragments, and I want to correct the facts directly:"

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

Used google to search for a Chinese name + 號 of a woman I saw as author of two poems published in 1797. Forgot to add "-ai". So above all the irrelevant links, was presented with a full classical bio with name, birthplace, other 號, period of activity etc. 100% hallucinated.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I imagine telling Buddha to hold on, I need to chat with my friend one more time before death is not something one does often?

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

Chinese aunties are the best. "Auntie Yao learned from Buddhist Auntie Fan to recite Buddha's name. Later, when dying, Buddha & Bodhisattvas came to escort her. She said, "I haven't said goodbye to Auntie Fan" and asked Buddha to pause in the air. After Fan came, then Auntie Yao ascended."

Screenshot from a Chinese book of Buddhist miracle tales on the efficacy of reciting the Buddha's name.

Text reads: 姚婆
唐姚婆。因范行婆者。勸令念佛。後臨終見佛菩薩夾迎。吿佛言。未與范行婆别。請佛暫住空中。范至。姚婆立化。

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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

This is just to say I have OCRed the text thet was in tne arch:ve and whicb yov were prabaldy seamhing for "breahtast" Fargme ms fheg mem debo:w5 sb ?mccf mmb 5c oc1b

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 23/07/2026

Thunder God and Lightning Mother are really teaching my neighbors a lesson about cherishing grains and paper, treating their daughters-in-law and children well, and staying honest in their business ventures!

Screenshot taken from a video I made of the thunderstorm passing overhead right now, showing a bolt of lightning hitting the ground in the distance. The sky is dark dark gray with the storm.

Woodblock printed illustration from Yu Zhi's 學堂日記圖說 that pairs with a story about heavenly retribution. It features Thunder God and Lightning Mother in the sky sending down punishment on six earthly sinners, each who wears a placard tucked behind their hands, bound behind their backs. Their individual crimes, which I collectively reference in the post, are written on the placards.

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Craig Clunas @craigclunas.bsky.social · 07/07/2026

Published by @aeon.co , some thoughts on how we know what we (think we) know about the imperial family of Ming China, subject of my last book @reaktionbooks.bsky.social aeon.co/essays/how-l...

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 06/07/2026

Back in Colorado and not sure what I miss most about Taiwan at the moment: the humidity? The green? The distinct lack of wildfires? The environment that allows me to be joyfully trilingual? All of the above and so much more, really.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

View from a window in 綠洲山莊 “Oasis Village” which held political prisoners on Green Island from 1972-1987. A partial glimpse of one KMT propaganda slogan, a partial glimpse of one of the slogans painted on the outside of the prison, together making 「毋忘苦海」 “never forget the sea of suffering”

View out a window from behind prison bars of a brilliantly blue sky with a few white clouds, and a verdant green lawn. On the left, the prison extends outwards, showing the first two characters of the slogan 苦海無邊回頭是岸。 on the right, the first two characters of 毋忘在莒 painted into a protruding large rock.

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Gregory Adam Scott 史瑞骼💀 @sudasana.bsky.social · 29/06/2026

Just arrived at my office! Includes a chapter by @qiaoj.bsky.social

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Impromptu stop at the Liudui Hakka Cultural park this afternoon meant I got to see this wonderful little exhibit tucked away in a corner. Given the reality of life for recent immigrants to Taiwan, I know a lot of this text is aspirational still, but absolutely worth working towards.

Entrance to the small exhibit, titled 變動中的台灣人 Evolving Taiwanese

Photo of the opening text on the wall that sets the tone for the exhibit, in characters and English (sorry I’m not proofreading the Japanese for this alt text but it’s there too):

本展透過歷史上在臺灣交會過的人群所留下的紀錄、文物與遺跡，呈現在曲折變動的歷程中，他們如何互相影響、摩擦、爭執、交融，型塑出特殊的「臺灣人經驗」。同時也透過臺灣人經驗的雜揉性（hybridity），省思臺灣社會不同人群之間的關係，尋求更為開放、相互連結的可能性。
This exhibition presents historical records, artifacts, and relics left behind by those whose paths intersected with Taiwan, illustrating how a uniquely Taiwanese experience was formed as a product of outside influence, conflict, and integration. By examining the connection between hybridity and ethnic group relations, the exhibit aims to explore greater, interconnected possibilities.

Photo of me, a white woman wearing glasses and a green floral shirt, pointing at the final sentence of text on the wall, which reads:

移民與住民
Immigrants and residents

文化或血統上所謂的「純粹」並不存在，人群分類也會持續變動。本展區回溯臺灣歷史上人群的遭遇與衝突，呈現歷代不斷融入來自各地的人。臺灣社水、會處在人與文化持續交會混雜的過程，誰是代蹇灣人」？臺灣人對於我們的意義是什麼？這是需要一直被協商與爭辯的問題。
社郡武大
仔上海牛
With group divisions constantly fluctuating, there can be no a such thing as a "pure" ethnic or cultural heritage. This section of the exhibition presents how various peoples have interacted, clashed, and even integrated into Taiwanese society over several generations. Yet, if Taiwanese society is a product of the constant blending of peoples and cultures, then whom is considered Taiwanese? What does it
mean to be Talwanese？

Photo of one of the final text displays in the exhibit:

臺灣人．一家人
THE PEOPLE OF TAIWAN, ONE FAMILY
你我的臉孔，是先人的足跡。
四面八方的人群來到這裡駐足，有爭執，也有相互扶持，進而成為一家人。
Our faces contain traces of our ancestors. Multitudes from all directions came here to live. They quarreled, but also cooperated with each other, before becoming a family.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 28/06/2026

Religious experiences this morning: 1) attending the same Taiwanese Presbyterian Church where I was baptized around 40 years ago 2) eating this mango

Photo of the church bulletin from this morning entirely in characters, most important：六合教會

Photo of a plastic clamshell container filled with cut mango, to which I added two scoops of free ice cream from the hotel

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 27/06/2026

Complex, beautiful feelings coming back to home that is also no longer really home

Picture of Kaohsiung harbor facing back into the city with a view of the skyline. It’s a cloudy gray day so the water is gray too

Photo of the view looking out over the strait from Kaohsiung harbor. Cloudy sky, cloudy water

Photo of me, a white woman wearing a green shirt that says “I AM TAIWANESE AMERICAN” with my arm linked with a terrifying mannequin of a white woman wearing a green dress that’s supposed to be vaguely Victorian looking, outside the former British consulate.

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K. Alexander 亞天恩 @thianun.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

Earning my keep on this Taiwan study trip. Led a morning walking tour of selected Tainan places of worship and, thanks to every deity out there, the pouring rain held off and we had a good time!

Photo of me, a white woman, perched on a traffic barrier and waving my hands around, talking to a small audience of US high school teachers about Mazu and her main temple in Tainan.

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