Seven Chickens, Six Hens, One Rooster
I have been spending some time recently looking at the wooden slips, or mujian 木簡 (Việt: mộc giản), that were excavated from the palace of the Nanyue Kingdom in Guangzhou.Nanyue/Nam…
Who Were the Hồi Kê? (aka Historians! It’s Over!!!)
After a break for a few months, it’s difficult to get into the mood to write a new blog post. I have plenty of ideas, but when I think of…
The View of AI Is Clearly Changing, but Not for the Humanities
I like to use X/Twitter as a means to gain a sense of how people view a certain issue. This is because as polarized as most media is today, there…
Announcing a New (Free) Open-Access Journal: Global Vietnam
My colleague/wife/partner-in-crime Phan Lê Hà and I, with the generous support of dear colleagues, are launching a new journal called “Global Vietnam.”This journal will be published by Amsterdam University Press,…
ChatGPT Is Haunted
I knew it would come to this. . .When photography was first invented, there were people who claimed that it was able to capture images of ghosts, the dead, etc.I’ve…
Curating Knowledge in the Age of AI Scholarship
So, I have been experimenting.I have been trying to see what happens when one takes the kind of article that appears in journals such as the Journal of Asian Studies,…
Various Thoughts on Why I’m Fine with LLMs Being Better Than Me
I recently wrote a brief post in which I admitted something that still feels a little strange to say out loud: LLMs can now do much of the work that…
I Need to Meditate on the AI Future. . .
For the past few months, I have been working heavily with ChatGPT (the paid version). It’s open all day long as I work on various things, and I repeatedly turn…
Editing, Researching, and (Eventually) Writing with AI
Over the past few years, I’ve seen the same pattern repeated over and over regarding statements made about LLMs. Someone will say something about the capabilities of a given LLM,…
Manguin, Malay Port Cities, and the Chinese Sources
In 2021, archaeologist Pierre-Yves Manguin published an article entitled “Srivijaya: Trade and Connectivity in the Pre-modern Malay World.” At the beginning of the article, Manguin traces the history of the…