iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

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Josh Marshall @joshtpm.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

omg. yes, they actually have video of him at the game. when does marshall mcluhan walk out and dunk on sen schmitt?

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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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Kevin M. Kruse @kevinmkruse.bsky.social · 29/09/2026

When they get back in power, Democrats need to go all-in on higher education. We need a campaign of reinvestment in public universities across the country that makes the Morrill Land-Grant Act look like nothing by comparison *and* a GI Bill of Rights-style program of tuition grants.

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Brendan O’Kane @bokane.org · 26/09/2026

The old website seems to be gone, but someone saved and posted all the old Popup Chinese episodes!

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rax ‘levon honkers’ king @raxkingisdead.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

there are only three narratives in fiction: 1) the hero's journey 2) a stranger comes to town 3) a greedy developer is going to tear down our beloved community center...UNLESS we put on the greatest breakdance show this town's ever seen

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 24/09/2026

Having little kids has given me a renewed appreciation for stickers of all sorts! Also, get your flu and covid shots!

Selfie of me with a sticker that says “I got my Flu shot”

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Artjoms Šeļa @artjomshl.bsky.social · 23/09/2026

a PhD position in LLMs, annotations, language and benchmarking @ University of Tartu. please share! digits.ut.ee/join-the-team/

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Quinn Daedal @quinnanya.me · 23/09/2026

Wonderful #DHmakes #DHbakes going on here, and this part is so relatable: "every ring came out of the oven slightly wonkier than the slice it came from, so the stack needed to be leveled layer by layer -- the difficulties of working with the real physical world, instead of purely onscreen."

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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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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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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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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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Artjoms Šeļa @artjomshl.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

I forgot that I made a starter pack with computational literary studies people — maybe it’s time for an update. Ping me if you’re not there! go.bsky.app/4et1nxZ

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Programming Historian @proghist.bsky.social · 17/09/2026

Grateful thanks to @princeton.edu, who have again renewed their membership to our Institutional Partnership Programme. As a #DiamondOpenAccess publisher, we rely on community investment to maintain and develop our multilingual portfolio of journals. 🔸 tinyurl.com/support-PH

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 16/09/2026

I always have this fear that I'm going to lose half my students on the last day of the add/drop period. But as long as I make it through today without fumbling, looks like it'll be a full house in both classes!

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

I kind of love that in this, the year of our lord 2026, the MARC standard homepage still looks like this (last updated, June 11, 2026): www.loc.gov/marc/

Image of the MARC Standards homepage, looking like it is straight out of the 1990s.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 14/09/2026

This looks like a cool text analysis library, and a nice discussion piece for my intro to Chinese text analysis class!

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Chloe Mashiter @chloemashiter.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Questions about TRANSMISSION? Thankfully this entirely benign and normal figure has answers for you! Group tickets currently on sale (the perfect way to play if you want to gather a bundle of friends for some spooky roleplay): everythingimmersive.com/events/trans...

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 11/09/2026

There was a time in my life I would have been absolutely scandalized at the thought of paying the equivalent of 8.5 RMB for a lamb skewer, but I guess I am just that bougie these days

Cart selling Beijing style yangrouchuanr for 40 ntd

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 09/09/2026

A bounteous vegetarian spread caps the end of an excellent first day of the Pacific Neighborhood Consortium conference here at Dharma Drum Institute of the Liberal Arts

An array of vegetarian dishes laid out in a buffet

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Taniel @taniel.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

As big as it gets: The Missouri Supreme Court has blocked the Missouri GOP’s gerrymander, and ordered that a citizen-led veto referendum be placed on the ballot. The SoS had blocked it. This would likely reverse the expected GOP pick-up of a Kansas City seat, and set up a huge November vote.

missouriindependent.com

Missouri Supreme Court blocks gerrymandered congressional map, orders referendum vote • Missouri Independent

Missourians will vote on the gerrymandered congressional map muscled through the Legislature in 2025, the Missouri Supreme Court ruled.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

One of the smartest, most insightful people I know is writing on an important topic and if you care about how to leverage data for meaningful change, you should definitely check it out. Disclaimer: I'm married to this person, so I'm not unbiased. But people agree! She's brilliant!

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

It’s frankly absurd that they are letting me teach a whole class in this room!

Floor to ceiling monitor with a 1750 map of Beijing displayed

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

It has been nearly 30 years since it aired, and still, every time I make a sandwich with mustard and mayonnaise I sing to myself: “Seems I’m always spreading mayostard, mustardayonaisse, and time…” youtu.be/mRntutn8udw?...

youtu.be

Mr. Show - Mayostard / Mustardayonnaise / Mustmayostardayonnaise

YouTube video by zabunia

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 28/08/2026

Looking at the literature on the horseshoe effect in PCA right now, and damn the name "De'ath" goes hard.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I purchased this painting for my office from an art show in my hometown. It was painted by one of my mom’s oldest and best friends and it warms my heart.

Picture of a framed watercolor of a sunflower .

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 26/08/2026

I feel this so hard, and to a smaller extent the same thing happens with grad school applications. I still have folders in my Gmail with communications from all the grad programs I was applying to in 2006. While I was 3 for 3 in MA program admissions, I went 0 for 8 in PhD programs.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Registration for swim lessons at the university pool opened at 11, with twelve spots available. Because we always need two of everything (twins) I had my alarm set, timer counting down to exactly 11. Then bam, gottem! Very proud of myself because by 11:04 there was already a waitlist.

Screenshot of a youth swim lesson sing up indicating there is a waitlist.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

Lot's of wistful, forlorn looking parents wandering out the campus center this morning. You can definitely tell it is move in time! I can't even imagine, here I am already getting teary eyed at the thought of the girls starting kindergarten in a week at a place just down the street.

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David Porter @dcporter.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

For anyone in the Montreal area: here's the preliminary schedule for the lecture series on Frontiers of Late Imperial China that I've put together for the upcoming academic year.

Lecture Series: “Frontiers of Late Imperial China”
Note that all talk titles remain tentative. Talks will be scheduled for the late afternoon (normally 4:00 to 5:30 PM, though we will try to schedule the Friday talk a bit earlier: 3:30 – 5:00 PM). All talks will be in English and will take place on the main campus of McGill University. Exact details, including specific location, abstracts of talks, etc. will be disseminated in advance of each talk.
Schedule:
Friday, October 2: George Qiao (Amherst College): “The Business of Empire: How Frontier Trade Remade China in the Early Modern Era”
Wednesday, October 28: Samuel Bass (University of Toronto): “Emancipation with Abolition in the Mongolian Frontier”
Wednesday, December 2: Sixiang Wang (University of California, Los Angeles): “Poetry as Constitutional Language in Early Modern East Asian Diplomacy”
Wednesday, January 20: Sarah Bramao-Ramos (Colby College): “Reprints, Retranslations, and Colophons: Reconstructing Manchu-Language Print Culture”
Thursday, February 18: Lan Wu (Mount Holyoke College): “Between the Reins: The Kinetic Reality of the Qing’s Inner Asia in the 18th Century”
Thursday, March 11: Lili Xia (Barnard College): “Geocultural ‘Northernness’ of Jurchen-Ruled China”
Thursday, April 8: Jaymin Kim (Rice University): “From an Open Frontier to Interstate Borderlands: Qing Central Asia, 1750s-1840s”
Funding Acknowledgment
This lecture series is generously supported by a Connection Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, as well as matching funds provided by the Foo-hooa Se 復華詩 (Renaissance of Chinese Poetry) program of McGill University and McGill’s Centre for Global Chinese Studies.
Questions
Please contact the organizer, David Porter (david.porter@mcgill.ca) with any questions. If you would like to be added to a dedicated e-mail list to ensure that you receive all updates about the series, please contact Jingyuan Wang (jingyuan.wang6@mail.mcgill.ca), who is assisting with logistics.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 21/08/2026

My kingdom for a spellchecker in Microsoft Word that does not trip on every little piece of pinyin and Chinese. I just went through every result of the spell check on the book for the first time since it was a three chapter dissertation. It caught 5 real errors. It thinks there are 1,400.

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University of Washington Information School @ischool.uw.edu · 20/08/2026

Melanie Walsh and Michelle H. Martin of the Information School faculty and Ph.D. student Imani Finkley were interviewed by @seattletimes.com about Walsh, Finkley and Yuanxi Li's research on AI models' predictions of characters' gender in children's stories. www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news...

seattletimes.com

UW researchers say AI-generated kids' books can twist biases in strange ways

AI-generated content has become more common in children's books. What happens to gender diversity when AI writes about animal characters?

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 19/08/2026

I really like the principal of the elementary school my girls are about to start at, but I've never gotten emails from a real person that set off the phishing alarm bells quite so strongly. Love to get an email with just the text "Please click here." Bonus points if it includes attachments.

Image of an email body with just the words "Please click here."

Body of an email with "click here" and a bunch of semi-sketchy looking attachments.

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 18/08/2026

Do I NEED to go to special collections to look at a 1730 copy of the rather strange "Record of Great Righteousness Dispelling Confusion " 大義覺迷錄? Not at all. Am I going to? Hell yeah I am. The alternative is waiting half a day for a modern copy to come from recap, and who has that kind of time?

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Craig Clunas @craigclunas.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

Just now reading proofs of an excellent forthcoming work on the multilingual #Ming www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067..., so here's the 1409 Galle trilingual (Chinese, Persian, Tamil) inscription for #EpigraphyTuesday www.unesco.org/en/memory-wo...

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Jerry Chen @jcsalterego.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

good news i'm in the newspaper. bad news i need to talk to the editor of this headline

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 10/08/2026

Whenever I run across Wang Shizhen 王士禛 (1634-1711), my first reaction is always "that's not MY Wang Shizhen 王世貞 (1526–1590)!" Anyone else? Just me? #nicheproblems

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Nothing connects us with our forebearers like the knowledge that they, too, needed leashes for their toddlers

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Digging through old files on the computer and just came across an old resume of mine from February 2009. It was a sad day when I deleted "commercial driver's license" from my resume/CV, but I regretfully had to let it lapse when I moved to Boston after grad school.

Screenshot of a "skills" section on a resume listing computer skills, language, and the practical experience of having a commercial drivers license (except combination trailers).

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Paul Vierthaler @vierth.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Polling the crowd for an extremely pedantic reason: How should I transcribe the circled character here? The radical here looks like 耳 to me but no such character exists in Unicode. It's clearly a variant of 眤, which is in turn a variant of 暱/昵 (so here 褻暱, to be improperly familiar with)

Image of a copy of the editorial principles of a late Ming novel the Villainous Wei Zhongxian with a character circled.

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lauren @lauren.rotatingsandwiches.com · 02/08/2026

if there's a sunday chore you hate doing i encourage you to avoid it. yes you've painlessly knock it out every other week and yes it only actually ever takes 15 minutes, but what if this time it kills you? best to avoid it

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Ted Underwood @tedunderwood.com · 02/08/2026

I’m in a different field, but I may share this with students/colleagues anyway — especially the warning about least publishable units and bean-counting, and advice to tackle bigger conceptual challenges.

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