New wrinkle in the Google AI update: it is scraping Bluesky, which means you absolutely can, trivially, plant false information into it, all you have to do is account for its propensity to garbage up the false information you feed it.

Little AI update. First, Google AI mode is still bringing the heat. Definitely the absolute best at being absolutely, unrepentantly shit at almost everything it does, while simultaneously being the least avoidable chatbot in the world. They are absolutely gonna get sued over this stuff eventually.

Heard Google turned up the AI this morning, decided to take it for a test spin. 1) I am not married to that person, 2) but that person is a real colleague who now has a pretty solid emotional distress libel case against Google, 3) that's not her picture, 4) the 'evidence' links are fake.

We got an "update" to our PeopleSoft grading software and now it predictively suggests, in non-alphabetical and shifting order, your most common grades according to how often you have given them so far in the class. Exiting the age of common sense, entering the age of average sense.

It's here! _Orphans of the Times_, translations from the pathbreaking Bei Dao and Li Tuo-edited book 《七十年代》. Fiction writers (Han Shaogong! Ah Cheng), poets (Zhai Yongming!), and artists (Xu Bing!) reflecting on their lives in memoirs of the PRC's turbulent 1970s. cup.cuhk.edu.hk/CUHKP/Orphan...

Post your warning sign

I found my notebook: here's the page from the first day of class. I knew it was special at the time and I was actually really really paying attention (although I didn't get down #3?), but looking back, wow. I was stupid lucky to have this in my life.

Tidying up the Pokémon clone I made with the kid last spring and all of a sudden realized what I want to bring to the new year

3. The Epstein party is in and of the very rich. His lying, posturing, manipulation, and the thinness of his grift are common in-group values and the rewards of successful grifting are seen as evidence of special excellence. Wexner, Dubin, Prince Andrew, Clinton, Trump, they all LIKED this guy.

2b. Rubio, Romney, Vance, and many other Republicans may hate Trump, but they make up a key part of the Epstein Party because they consent to be owned. Perhaps they think it will be temporary. Maybe they’re afraid. But their willingness to eat shit and smile makes them Epstein Party members.

1. Ownership, to the Epstein Party, is domination and raw power; it explicitly includes the ownership of people, and can be enforced by money, fear, social pressure, or force. The more you own, the better you are: in the Party, ownership made Epstein seem cool and smart, which he wasn’t.

Really like both the @catherineweiss.bsky.social poems in the new DIAGRAM magazine (@eldiagram.bsky.social), one pasted below, the other is called "The Multitool" and you can read it here: thediagram.com/25_2/weiss.h...

Poetry + art: Liu Xiaobo, _June Fourth Elegies_, tr. Jeff Yang www.graywolfpress.org/books/june-f...; Ai Weiwei, "A Study of Perspective": www.moma.org/collection/w...; Bei Dao, _Sidetracks_, tr. Jeff Yang: www.ndbooks.com/book/sidetra...; from Gao Xingjian's "Calling for a New Renaissance," below

Now available open access: _Lyrical Experiments in Sinophone Verse_, ed. Justyna Jaguscik, Joanna Krenz, and Andrea Riemenschnitter. Lots of pathbreaking research into Chinese poetry written by workers, women, computers, Hong Kongers, and others on the edge. library.oapen.org/handle/20.50...

One of the things that really worries me about ChatGPT is that it'll end the era of absolutely bonkers spam mail. I am 10000% more likely to get my computer infected with whatever's coming tomorrow than I am to sign up for Packback.

There had been a research center about Hong Kong at U of Toronto since 1994, serving the wave of immigrants from Hong Kong to Canada. In 2008, though, the current library was inaugurated, attracting Maria Lau 劉麗芝, the former librarian of the City University of Hong Kong.

I went to a good conference last week on translation and the Sinophone hosted by @chrissonghk.bsky.social, feat. @myetcetera.bsky.social, @ciwasaki.bsky.social and a lot of other folks. But I want to talk about one of the venues, the Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library 利銘澤典宬, short thread:

Received this in the mail this morning, as if the marketers knew that my lecture this afternoon is on the post-socialist spiritual void of 1980s China. Grinding to growing indeed.

(winces, hears parental voice from many years ago) "Are you getting ANOTHER knife dirty?" It's almost like a haptic apology for using silverware. I have never repurposed a peanut-butter-covered knife, and I do the dishes here, so it's not like I expect anyone else to put it in the dishwasher.

V. lucky to have been able to translate Zhang Zao poems with fellow Cornellian Yanting-Leah Li, because they are absolute. bangers. "In the Mirror" and "Drifting," from the brand-new _A Century of Modern Chinese Poetry_. The book is here: uwapress.uw.edu/book/9780295...

The Taiwanese poet Ling Yü 零⾬ has won the 2025 Newman Prize for Chinese Literature. Here's her poem "Names Vanished from the Map," tr. Andrea Lingenfelter: www.poetryinternational.com/en/poets-poe.... Here's four poems tr. Fiona Sze-Lorrain: theoffendingadam.com/author/lingyu/ incl. the one below:

The only winner is Google Translate. Makes a legitimate attempt to do anything you ask of it, takes risks, isn't afraid to be weird, and comes to surprising revelations, like "people generally prefer their older male cousins to their mothers." (the cousin translation is wrong, btw).

Spotify recommendations: Spotify is an idiot and has never listened to music in its entire life. My most recent auto-generated playlist looks like this: one part ambient, one part movie soundtrack, one part kick-through-the-walls party music. Don't get me started on the automatically generated DJ.

Reviews of the personalities of AI/AI adjacent services I interact with, a 🧵. Losers first: ChatGPT, which is fussy, mealymouthed, and fake-authoritative, even though it is constantly wrong. It has terminal both-sidesism and if you ask a question it doesn't like, gives you a little pisspot lecture.

Also, I finally found my spiritual community here, but they are unfortunately minifigs.

An inadvertent meme from a 烧饼 wrapper, which I believe to mean "Just because I am wrong does not mean you have permission to educate me."

Little Taiwan things: my building superintendent admonishing construction workers not to overload the elevator in elegant calligraphy and four-character meter (老久电梯 不胜负荷 请勿超载！)

I'm so proud for him (although we've never met!) as well as all the translators and scholars who support him, esp. Maghiel van Crevel. Mu Cao is a truth-teller and a voice of great value. I'll leave you with his picture and this poem, tr. @jenniferfeeley.bsky.social: pen.org/two-poems-mu...