Rephrasing is a great synthetic data strategy, but it doesn't solve AI's copyright problem. And I spend some time with the writing is just fossil fuel for AIs metaphor. The latest substack.

For a great jargon-free walkthrough of how STS (Science and Technology Studies) approaches help us understand how to think about new technology, see David Runciman's interview of ‪@shannonvallor.bsky.social‬ on "The history of bad ideas: value-free tech".

Chewing on the recent court decisions on copyright and AI training in the latest newsletter. Some bitterness, but much that is very tasty indeed... good to see the collective intelligence of the legal system beginning to operate here...

Do you want a great 15-minute update on infectious disease outbreaks around the world? Concise, no nonsense? And paired with a discussion w/ experts (& @nuspress.bsky.social authors) Daniel Bausch and Kishore Mahbubani on prospects for global public health? It's here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=05El...

So sorry not to be attending AAS-in-Asia this year in person... missing plenty of @nuspress.bsky.social authors...

Was very glad to be able to spend time at the Gongs-Smoke-B lood-Earth show at Ateneo Art Gallery. It is an extension of the Tiw-Tiwong Uncyclopedia which @nuspress.bsky.social distributes ex-Philippines. Enjoyed meeting these Ateneo student looking at the book & discussing their work.

Full house for the first panel on “regionalist and other decolonising perspectives: honouring T.K. Sabapathy…” at #ForArtHistory2025 @forarthistory.org.uk

We just launched a nifty new map-based interface for the @nuspress.bsky.social #openaccess repository of Southeast Asian archaeological site reports. (Yes, it was vibe-coded…)

You go @alexreisner.bsky.social ! ‘Worse, generative-AI chatbots are presented as oracles that have “learned” from their training data … This decontextualizes knowledge… and makes it harder for writers and researchers to build a reputation and engage in healthy intellectual debate.’

Ida Pfeiffer is much less known in the anglophone world than she should be... a pioneering woman traveller. Alfred Wallace followed in her footsteps in travelling throught the Malay Archipelago. Learn more about Ida in the BBC's Human Intelligence with @nuspress.bsky.social author John van Wyhe.

The journey to #AAS2025 starts soon! ... if anyone attending would like to have a chat about manuscripts, books, publishing ideas, digital humanities projects, etc, find a time here, or look for me at @nuspress.bsky.social Booth 318.

Spent some time using Perplexity Pro's Deep Research function today. Handling my first query reasonably well, with links to sources, but it hallucinated like mad on my follow up question, confidently presenting gov't programmes that didn't exist, BCG reports and AWS White Papers never published etc

Relevance of The Nutmeg’s Curse from @amitav.bsky.social just seems to be growing four years after publication…

The AI culture wars: @deepseek.bsky.social says Kimchi is a Chinese thing in Chinese, and was a Korean invention in Korean. I would bet this is a straight-up reflection of its training data rather than a result of post-training, but here we go…

“More than a compilation of knowledge, this is a road map to the future…” Sylvie Briand at launch of Infectious Disease Emergencies.

I totally disagreed with @archive.org’s digital library land grab, but totally understand that the current crisis shows how important is their effort to archive websites, like those of the US government…

I have tried to avoid it but I too have thoughts on DeepSeek...

The review by @profdevisridhar.bsky.social of Infectious Disease Emergencies in @thelancet.bsky.social makes clear that the toughest issues are societal: "infectious disease preparedness and response are increasingly both technical and social and ethical issues." How best to address the latter two?

"Crucial reading for people at all career stages in public health as well as policy makers" The review of our Infectious Disease Emergencies textbook/handbook in Lancet (www.thelancet.com/journals/lan... (free w/ registration).

This webinar series was an informational lifeline during the COVID-19 outbreak. When @nuspress.bsky.social Press got the chance to work with this team as publisher, we jumped at it. Now rebranded as "Outbreaks: Updates and Analyses". Check out the first episode of season three.

Additional nuance on the impact of DOGE... www.wired.com/story/doge-e...

Quite the speech!

To understand how to fight a wildfire in California, read George R. Stewart’s Fire, published in 1948 and republished recently by NYRB Books. I’m sure new tech helps (fire retardants dropped from the air, etc) but sounds like the basics of containment are the same…

We’ve know for years now that AI companies trained their models on caches of pirated works, ie Books3. Now we have evidence that Facebook also torrented the notorious LibGen website for text, and that MZ approved this, *and* that they filtered out © info fm the files. techcrunch.com/2025/01/09/m...

#NewBook: Recent discoveries & improved investigative techniques have opened up dramatic new insights into Southeast Asia's past. Charles Higham's synthesis of nearly 2 million years of human endeavour in "Early #SoutheastAsia" is an essential introduction: buff.ly/41WmecM #BookSky #prehistory

Great piece from @cohenjon.bsky.social quoting WHO's Maria Van Kerkhove: “Everyone is acting as though this pandemic didn’t really happen.” See emergencies.pubpub.org/infectious-d... for lessons learned and a review of the many pillars of infectious disease outbreak preparedness and response!

To Jimmy Carter fm Lee Kuan Yew: "I respected the frankness you placed on human needs…The world is not fair. But that America’s President is seen to be making it more fair, is to win half the battle for hearts and minds…America can give a fresh lead to this search for a more just and equal world…

Latest from Singapore's MinLaw. "In respect of the CDA Permitted Use [Computational Data Analysis, our equivalent of TDM], MinLaw and IPOS will *not* create a new prescribed exception to allow circumvention of ACMs for CDA purposes..."

We (@nuspress.bsky.social) just published an #openaccess website on pandemic preparedness, bringing together insights from more than 90 key members of the responder community, with field experience in Ebola, HIV, COVID-19, mpox, etc. A 🧵 of appreciation of this diverse group.

Finally read this. Funny, but it is mostly an argument for why textbooks are a good thing in university teaching: "ensures consistent delivery of course material", "allows me to send less time on context and more on critical thinking & writing". Talented domain-trained editors help authors. Etc.

Read bsky.app/profile/cfie... by @cfiesler.bsky.social for more on this! So original researcher took his post down in response to feedback — only for another researcher to put up a dataset twice as large… oh haha!

How to have an open architecture and yet give individuals control over use of their posts. Circle not yet squared…

DOGE seems to me the US equivalent of a Xi Jinping-type anti-corruption campaign. A way to bully government departments to fall in line? Do what we want (ideologically or in terms of selective enforcement) or we will shut you down as part of an anti-waste | corruption campaign.

Does Bluesky do a good job sharing Spotify links? this track has just blown me away…

Really enjoyed the last HOMSEA conference I attended… and always nice to meet in Yogya…

53,000!?! From Caixin: "More than 53,000 Chinese citizens have been arrested in a crackdown on gangs of telecommunication scammers in neighboring Myanmar that have resorted to kidnappings and murder…the ministry acknowledged that some [are] fleeing deeper into the Southeast Asian country."

Especially concerning when read together with my previous post www.nytimes.com/2024/11/19/o...

Poignant frontline perspective of a #Rwandan physician responding to the recent #marburg outbreak. It is well worth a read. We are are two weeks into the 42 day countdown to declaring the outbreak over🤞🏾. These brave HCPs kept us safe. #medsky #idsky 🧪 www.nejm.org/doi/full/10....

Dialogue from more than 139,000 movies and TV shows has been used without permission to train generative-AI tools, including by companies such as Apple and Anthropic, a new investigation from Alex Reisner reveals: theatln.tc/iYjUdBzR

Top tip to everyone pilling over from Twitter, use the Sky Follower Bridge to rebuild your network here on BlueSky, but keep running it every few days as more and more come over. Please share and help everyone re-connect and keep re-connecting.

PSA: You can run a google search sans AI summary by adding the search term “-AI” to any query.

I'm not at all sure that a universal translator will turn out to be an entirely good thing, rather than lots of specific, context-bound translators, but these folks are certainly aware of the issues. Worth watching: translated.com/the-power-of...

Catchy headline, and, well, in Nature, but seriously, "poetry" is hardly a commodity... www.nature.com/articles/s41...