Christian Göbel
@christiangoebel.bsky.social
Prof of China Studies, Uni Vienna. Political scientist working on state-society relations, protest, government responsiveness in China. Data hoarder, computational methods.
We need to discuss abolishing grades instead of ways to prevent cheating or forcing educators to integrate LLMs into a learning process.
Ulrike Franke@rikefranke.bsky.social · 4w agoGod this is bleak. Almost everybody cheated and learned less than in previous years www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty...
Ich freue mich ebenfalls sehr. Die Tatsache, dass ein Autokratieforscher zu einer Veranstaltung eingeladen wird, die sich mit der Zukunft der Demokratie beschäftigt, zeigt, wie wichtig das Thema ist. Der Abend wird sicherlich spannend.
Maria Mayrhofer@mariamayrhofer.bsky.social · 2mo agoIch freu mich schon sehr: Am 22.6. darf ich auf Einladung von @univie.ac.at u.a. mit @bprainsack.bsky.social @christiangoebel.bsky.social @riedmann.net u UNHCR-Hochkommissar Volker Türk über die Frage "Wohin steuert die Demokratie?" diskutieren.
Alle Infos zum Abschlussevent und zur Anmeldung findet man hier: ⤵️ 🏛️
Semesterfrage Demokratie Abschlussevent
Wie erkennen wir autoritäre Tendenzen frühzeitig und stärken demokratische Resilienz? Diskutieren Sie zum Abschluss der Semesterfrage mit Expert*innen aus Wissenschaft und Praxis über Frühwarnsignale,...
rudolphina.univie.ac.at
Österreichische Unis rufen zu einer Demonstration nächsten Mittwoch, 13:00 Uhr auf. Demonstriert wird gegen anvisierte hohe Budgetkürzungen, die die Qualität von Forschung und Lehre massiv beeinträchtigen würden. Bitte weitersagen und teilnehmen! www.univie.ac.at/aktuelles/pr...
Budget - Unis rufen zu Demos gegen Kürzungen auf
Rektor Schütze: "Schaden für die Reputation enorm"
univie.ac.at
Golden advice from SAGE on how to prevail in the cutthroat competition for doing peer reviews.
This is based on complaints they found on X. The 7-day rolling average peaks at 13 (thirteen) per day. ChatGPT alone was processing 2.5 billion prompts a day at the start of the window they looked at. I am not a statistician, but …?
Number of AI chatbots ignoring human instructions increasing, study says
Exclusive: Research finds sharp rise in models evading safeguards and destroying emails without permission
theguardian.com
Anyone?
Mike Thompson-Brusstar@mthompsonbrusstar.com · 5mo agohey #chinasky, does anyone have a full run of digitized 红旗/求是 articles (for any period but especially looking for around the transition from one to the other)? I know someone must have done this already. Please do not make me digitize another Chinese publication.
That said, the rest went flyingly. Program takes Multimarkdown script created with Scrivener, inserts citations form bibtex library, builds tex file and formats citations with the .csl file created by the LLM based on journal specifications, then produces pdf and docx files.
Christian Göbel@christiangoebel.bsky.social · 6mo agoLaTeX is the final boss for LLMs. Changing a conversion script so that one table in a document is presented in landscape mode broke the machine. The output is eerily similar to how I feel when I need to do this by hand.
LaTeX is the final boss for LLMs. Changing a conversion script so that one table in a document is presented in landscape mode broke the machine. The output is eerily similar to how I feel when I need to do this by hand.
Sounds like a good speech. Keeps options for cooperation open, but not at any price(“our response will be unflinching, united and proportional“); provides vision of world trade without the US, which fits the title, expresses that patience with US not honouring agreements is wearing thin.
Finbarr Bermingham@fbermingham.bsky.social · 7mo agoUrsula von der Leyen's speech at Davos is underway now. Will she continue the conciliatory tone towards Trump her spokespeople delivered yesterday? Judging by the title, I'd expect so: "How can we cooperate in a more contested world?"
Can‘t say the writing wasn‘t on the wall.
Johannes Kast@johka.eurosky.social · 8mo agoSome European officials who have seen the documents said they weren’t sure whether to take some of the U.S. proposals seriously. [...] "It was an economic version of the 1945 conference where World War II victors divvied up Europe." www.wsj.com/world/europe...
My department is hiring an associate professor in contemporary Chinese politics. Come and join me in Oslo! www.jobbnorge.no/en/available...
Associate Professor of Chinese politics (290742) | University of Oslo
Job title: Associate Professor of Chinese politics (290742), Employer: University of Oslo, Deadline: Tuesday, February 3, 2026
jobbnorge.no
Our new ASPI report 'The Party’s AI' is out now. It shows how China’s LLMs, vision models and “AI+” governance architecture are hard-coding censorship and control into the future of AI. www.aspi.org.au/repo...
Online survey research is screwed. LLM-enabled agents can take surveys just like humans. Here's a video I made where the Comet browser agent takes a simple survey and gets around nearly all my bot detection checks. The crisis is here already...more in this 🧵 www.youtube.com/watch?v=05Je...
Comet browser fills out a survey with bot detection questions
YouTube video by John Helveston
youtube.com
While Hongkongers are mobilizing to get beds, student's textbooks, curtains, baby formulas, missing pets to survivors of the Tai Po Hung Fuk fire, western-centric discourse are quick to paint us as "backwards, unscientific, unsafe"... and I have zero patience for this racist bs.
I’ve been monitoring online discussions from Hong Kong about why HKers consider blaming bamboo scaffolding is a gov spin, and I think many AUS media have got it WRONG. They think it’s a spin NOT because they see bamboo scaffolding as a tradition that distinguishes HK from China.
State-backed Hong Kong newspaper Ta Kung Pao has taken down an investigative report published on 28 Nov which cited industry sources saying building maintenance works effectively controlled by cartel, rife with corrupt practices in tender process, widespread cost and corner-cutting in materials.
Multiple local new sources in Hong Kong are reporting that the police have begun arresting activists calling for independent inquiries and accountability for the Tai Po fire 😡
天朝物產豐盈，無所不有，原不藉外夷貨物以通有無
Sense Hofstede@sensehofstede.nl · 8mo agoChina is making trade impossible – Robin Harding in FT: ‘There is nothing that China wants to import, nothing it does not believe it can make better and cheaper, nothing for which it wants to rely on foreigners a single day longer than it has to.’ www.ft.com/content/f294...
📊 In this blog post, I use my visits database to look at Xi Jinping’s changing dominance seen through diplomatic patterns in MFA data: the third term really is different. sensehofstede.nl/xi-jinpings-...
Xi Jinping’s changing dominance seen through diplomatic patterns
Since Xi Jinping has begun his third term, much has been written about him delegating more responsibilities to a new crop of trusted subordinates, both domestically and abroad. This is an important de...
sensehofstede.nl
I lied. Put your clothes back on. We’re going to talk about how there are actually female scholars within Confucianism who contributed significantly to Chinese literature, philosophy, and history, and their accomplishments are worthy of note and should be studied just as much as the men
Stellar, important and painstaking work tracing China's external investments worldwide on a project-by-project level, more than 33k in total. The dataset and very good visualisations available on china.aiddata.org. Can't believe this isn't getting more attention here.
China Global Development Dashboard
china.aiddata.org
Mike Tierney@miketierneyir.bsky.social · 9mo agoNew research from my colleagues @wm.edu's AidData on Chinese development finance and investments in both developing countries and also the US, UK, EU, and Japan. New report and dataset released tomorrow. Here is a preview from the BBC: www.bbc.com/news/article...
Interesting conversation on China's lending and investments in the US, UK, and EU. With AidData's Brad Parks, David Culver, and Sailor Miao (all @wm.edu alums). Foreign aid nerds, see Brad's comments on U.S. now emulating China: www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8ZL...
Tracking China's Global Influence: A Conversation with CNN and W&M's AidData
YouTube video by William & Mary
youtube.com
Delighted to share a new @carnegieendowment.org report on China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint. Over 50 entities in China have provided training to at least 138 countries, forming a major pillar of Beijing’s drive to reshape global security: carnegieendowment.org/research/202...
China’s Foreign Police Training: A Global Footprint
New data reveal how China’s foreign police training programs have become an integral part of Beijing’s strategy to remake global security.
carnegieendowment.org
Leib Littman at CloudResearch notes that acquiescence bias is often exacerbated on some opt-in online panels typically used for consumer research, where fraudulent respondents have an incentive to say "yes" and route themselves into more surveys.
New edited volume just dropped! Quantitative History of China: State Capacity, Institutions, and Development edited by Chen Zhiwu, myself, and Ma Debin is now able as a free PDF/ePub download. 1/2 link.springer.com/book/10.1007...
Quantitative History of China
This Open Access book showcases a collection of new findings concerning China's political, social, and economic history based on large historical datasets.
link.springer.com
Independent Chinese-language film festival in US canceled after pressure campaign – Nikkei Asia: ‘said that he did not feel he was in physical danger but that the relentless messages forced him to shut down the event.’
Indie Chinese film festival in US canceled after pressure campaign
Organizer's reports of harassment echo other allegations of transnational repression
asia.nikkei.com
In case you missed it, Kerry Brown wrote a book that plagiarized Shelley Rigger’s classic book title. I, along with others who were asked to review Kerry’s manuscript, said verbatim to change the title. In the most tacky and unprofessional fashion, he stole her title anyway.
