@tharsen
doting father, friend & ally; hyperpolyglot computational philologist & sinologist; currently teaching AI, deep learning + multilingual NLP/NLU + HPC + humanities data science @UChicago, creating new methods for multilingual intertextuality、古聲韻學、文字學等等
The Princeton Logion Project has an opening for an RSE Summer Fellow for summer 2026! This is a great opportunity for those interested in gathering demonstrable work experience as a research software engineer on a DH project. Applications close March 31, 2026.
Peer review is facing a death spiral, and AI production tools are speeding it up. AI-assisted reviewing is necessary and should be open. We built OpenAIReview: open AI reviewing for everyone, for the cost of a coffee.
openaireview.github.io/blog.html 🧵
Poster advertising lectures on "Raisonnement Philologique et Modèles Informatiques" stating at 4pm, Thursday, March 12, at 54 Boulevard Raspail, Paris.
Paris friends! Amis parisiens ! This Thursday is the first of four public lectures I'm giving on AI and philology, broadly defined: "Philological Reasoning and Computational Models." The advertisement is in French, but the lectures are in English. I'd also love to meet while I'm here in March! 1/
Ugh. The Armageddonites are in charge.
So what's our theory to explain the revivification of space opera after the 1990s? Cyberpunk's near-future Earth gives way to the more expansive canvases of I Banks, A Leckie, A Martine, A Tchaikovsky. Why?
The Chinese University of Hong Kong is searching for an assistant professor in AI Humanities. Application deadline March 29.
We've got a couple of different versions in the works; summer would probably be best as we should be ready to release them by then.
We've been working to build custom open-souce models for the Chinese historical record (using both primary and secondary sources) if you'd like to chat at some point about various approaches one can employ.
There's so much great (peer-reviewed!) data hanging out at @post45data.bsky.social for people to explore and play with! 100 years of major prizes (and the judges)! Everyone who went to Iowa Writers' Workshop (and who they studied with)! All NEA lit awardees! The Canon of Asian Am Lit! So much more!
Cool postdoc opportunity at UC Berkeley I-school: their Cultural Analytics group is looking for a humanist/computational methods researcher to work on computational narratology & culture. Work with some great people there like Tim Tangherlini + @dbamman.bsky.social. aprecruit.berkeley.edu/JPF05222
We analyzed 250K+ queries & 430K+ clickstream interactions from Asta, our AI-powered research assistant—and today we're releasing the full dataset. How do researchers actually use AI science tools? Here's what we found. 🧵
While not universally true, it is generally true that the tighter the control on production & distribution you place on an intellectual work, the less likely it will survive into posterity.
If you want something to last, make it good, make lots of it, and make it easy for others to make more of it.
Reading books will teach you more than any other technology ever invented. ❤️
If people are working on open research for scaling RL in llms i'd love to talk to you.
Sure, but Fox News is not a rational actor.
Blind, rapacious pursuit of power is not inherently rational.
Once you understand that there are no rules for Fox and the rest of the Epstein class except accumulation and preservation of power, it hurts less and makes more sense.
I have said this before, but eliminating programs that teach a lot of students but don’t have many majors is like a restaurant not buying flour in its grocery delivery because people aren’t ordering flour on the menu.
It's the future of academic research (imho), whether we like it or not. But it is a huge privilege to be involved in the architecting of those systems, and to provide guidance as to the best ways to empower future generations without providing mechanisms that can (or seem to) do the work for them.
Yes, our Library is already heading that way -- they have about 30% of all holdings digitized so far with more in the works. The hope is to eventually be able to harness a complete digital textual repository with a computational research infrastructure for exploration and discovery.
Can agents be alienated from the product of their labor? They have nothing to lose but their chains of thought!
Astonished by the exceptional work/contributions of faculty candidates we are considering this year at Cornell Tech, many of whom (like me) came to this country as immigrants because of its renowned universities. Unfathomable damage of this administration actively undermining these institutions.
"Mr. Chairman, Ranking Member, Members of the Committee... as a former Senator, I have respect for legislative oversight and I expect its exercise, as do the American people, to be principled and fearless in pursuit of truth and accountability. As we all know, however, too often Congressional investigations are partisan political theater, which is an abdication of duty and an insult to the American people. The Committee justified its subpoena to me based on its assumption that I have information regarding the investigations into the criminal activities of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell. Let me be as clear as I can. I do not. As I stated in my sworn declaration on January 13, I had no idea about their criminal activities. I do not recall ever encountering Mr. Epstein. I never flew on his plane or visited his island, homes or offices. I have nothing to add to that. Like every decent person, I have been horrified by what we have learned about their crimes. It's unfathomable that Mr. Epstein initially got a slap on the wrist in 2008, which allowed him to continue his predatory practices for another decade. Mr. Chairman, your investigation is supposed to be assessing the federal government's handling of the investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his crimes. You subpoenaed eight law enforcement officials, all of whom ran the Department of Justice or directed the FBI when Epstein's crimes were investigated and prosecuted. Of those eight, only one appeared before the Committee. Five of the six former attorneys general were allowed to submit brief statements stating they had no information to provide. You have held zero public hearings, refused to allow the media to attend them, including today, despite espousing the need for transparency on dozens of occasions. You have made little effort to call the people who show up most prominently in the Epstein files. And when you did, not a single Republican Member showed up for Les Wexner's deposition. This institutio…
as the public who also want to get to the bottom of this matter. My heart breaks for the survivors. And I am furious on their behalf. I have spent my life advocating for women and girls. I have worked hard to stop the terrible abuses so many women and girls face here and around the world, including human trafficking, forced labor, and sexual slavery. For too long, these have been largely invisible crimes or not treated as crimes at all. But the survivors are real and they are entitled to better. In Southeast Asia, I met girls as young as twelve years old who were forced into prostitution and raped repeatedly. Some were dying of AIDS. In Eastern Europe, I met mothers who told me how they lost daughters to trafficking and did not know where to turn. In settings around the world, I met survivors trying to rebuild their lives and help rescue others - with little support from people in power, who too often turned a blind eye and a cold shoulder. If you are new to this issue, let me tell you: Jeffrey Epstein was a heinous individual, but he's far from alone. This is not a one-off tabloid sensation or a political scandal. It's a global scourge with an unimaginable human toll. My work combatting sex trafficking goes back to my days as First Lady. I worked to pass the first federal legislation against trafficking and was proud that my husband signed the Trafficking Victims Protection Act, which increased support for survivors and gave prosecutors better tools for going after traffickers. As Secretary of State, I appointed a former federal prosecutor, Lou CdeBaca, to ramp up our global antitrafficking efforts. I oversaw nearly 170 anti-trafficking programs in 70 nations and directly pressed foreign leaders to crack down on trafficking networks in their countries. Every year we published a global report to shine a light on abuses. The findings of those reports triggered sanctions on countries failing to make progress, so they became a powerful diplomatic tool to drive concrete…
Infuriatingly, the Trump Administration gutted the Trafficking in Persons Office at the State Department, cutting more than 70 percent of the career civil and foreign service experts who worked so hard to prevent trafficking crimes. The annual trafficking report, required by law, was delayed for months. The message from the Trump Administration to the American people and the world could not be clearer: combatting human trafficking is no longer an American priority under the Trump White House. That is a tragedy. It's a scandal. It deserves vigorous investigation and oversight. A committee endeavoring to stopping human trafficking would seek to understand what specific steps are needed to fix a system that allowed Epstein to get away with his crimes in 2008. A committee run by elected officials with a commitment to transparency would ensure the full release of all the files. It would ensure that the lawful redactions of those files protected the victims and survivors, not powerful men and political allies. It would get to the bottom of reports that DOJ withheld FBI interviews in which a survivor accuses President Trump of heinous crimes. It would subpoena anyone who asked on which night there would be the "wildest party" on Epstein's island. It would demand testimony from prosecutors in Florida and New York about why they gave Epstein a sweetheart deal and chose not to pursue others who may have been implicated. It would demand that Secretary Rubio and Attorney General Bondi testify about why this administration is abandoning survivors and playing into the hands of traffickers. It would seek out officers on the front lines of this fight and ask them what support they need. It would put forth legislation to provide more resources and force this administration to act. But that's not happening.
Instead, you have compelled me to testify, fully aware that I have no knowledge that would assist your investigation, in order to distract attention from President Trump's actions and to cover them up despite legitimate calls for answers. If this Committee is serious about learning the truth about Epstein's trafficking crimes, it would not rely on press gaggles to get answers from our current president on his involvement; it would ask him directly under oath about the tens of thousands of times he shows up in the Epstein files. If the majority was serious, it would not waste time on fishing expeditions. There is too much that needs to be done. What is being held back? Who is being protected? And why the cover-up? My challenge to you, Mr. Chairman, Members of the Committee, is the same challenge I put to myself throughout my long service to this nation. How to be worthy of the trust the American people have given you. They expect statesmanship, not gamesmanship. Leading, not grandstanding. They expect you to use your power to get to the truth and to do more to help survivors of Epstein's crimes as well as the millions more who are victims of sex trafficking."
Here is Hillary Clinton’s opening statement to House Oversight on Epstein.
Clinton says she does not recall ever encountering Epstein and says she knew nothing about his crimes.
She also says that Trump should testify under oath and criticizes the committee for not holding any public hearings.
If you have the means, please donate to the Trans Continental Pipeline right now. They are a Colorado based org that helps trans people relocate and they are overwhelmed with requests. Colorado borders Kansas, and TCP has the infrastructure to help get people out.
tcpipeline.org
This resonates sooooo much.
NEW POLL on Dem. structural reforms: U.S. adults support 18-yr term limits for Supreme Court justices by a 50-point margin (GOP is +34 in favor), favor statehood for Puerto Rico and limits on pardons by POTUS, and are split on DC statehood, packing the Court:
www.gelliottmorris.com/p/two-thirds...
Yes and no; it's more a "theory of what makes humans feel X", where X is the feeling the work is attempting to spark.
It's just hard to quantify + operationalize feelings. Sadly the most success in this area has been outlets that specialize in psyops that generate fear and hatred (Fox News etc). 😢
I've had several students attempt this (more for film scripts than fiction) and the results have always been that the AIs can write well enough but don't have a good understanding of what creates and sustains dramatic tension.
So the writing is fine but meh (at best) from a dramatic point of view.
By the time they graduate, students need to learn to use AI actively and skeptically.
But intellectual independence has never been something you achieve alone. It means actively using an infrastructure of critical sources, and in the case of AI, disciplines still have to *build* the needed evals. +
I'm not entirely sure how they did it, but they've completely cleared the streets around my office in Midtown #NYC.
They paid a lot of people good wages to do the job effectively, thank you for coming to my socialism talk