Independent scholar, PhD in communication and culture, occasional writer, always looking for a new project. I wrote a book on Mamoru Oshii’s films.
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👂 There have been a bevy of announcements and celebrations this year. So many that it’s easy to miss out. 😞 We’ve got you handled with our new FOMO giveaway! 🎉 To enter: ✅ Follow us, like and RT this post. ✅ the giveaway starts today and ends September 12 midnight EST. 🌎 Open worldwide!
Josie and the Posse Comitatus Act Is that anything?
Himeji Castle (2023)
I think the concern is that ease of use contributes to an over reliance on the technology and doesn’t necessarily lead to mastery. I know how easy it can be to look something up and promptly forget it.
You can certainly get faster answers now, but does that mean better learning? Or does the time spent with a problem, looking up characters by radicals, provide a better foundation? My gut says it’s the latter, but I don’t honestly know.
This ties into some half-formed thoughts I have been having about the removal of support for languages / area studies and the need for "old fashioned" language and culture knowledge.
"Of course, the implication of today’s digital technologies, especially generative AI, is that multilingualism is obsolete.... it seems likely that learning foreign languages and cultures will also become one aspect of cultural resistance to pervasive tech mediation of our lives."
For as long as I’ve been into US comics - coming up 40 years - it’s been a smallish industry that remembers being big. For the first 20 of those years the refrain was “how can we get kids to read comics again?” and for the last 20 it’s been “yeah but we meant these other comics”
I also need to peruse this one at some point. www.schiffermilitary.com/products/jap...
That's been in my "to be purchased" for a good number of years now. :)
Yes, thanks! I hadn't seen that.
Another expensive book (but this one just came out) - Hirabayashi Hatsunosuke Reader, The: Mass Culture and Intermediality in Imperial Japan. I do need to read the essay "Film as a Mechanism of Americanization" - it seems directly relevant to my earlier studies. www.bloomsbury.com/us/hirabayas...
Out next May - The Kyoto School and the Japanese Navy The Hidden Truth Behind the Alleged War Collaboration I am definitely interested in this. And of course it's US$100+ because those are the books that get my attention it seems. www.bloomsbury.com/us/kyoto-sch...
I would have jumped at this postdoc 10+ years ago. uidaho.peopleadmin.com/postings/49354
The hardcover was only for the first edition, and mostly intended for libraries. (It didn't have a dust jacket or anything like that.)
Nothing against the writers who were chosen, but I am a bit bummed when I see something like this Angel's Egg release with new essays, and nobody asked me to contribute. shop.umbrellaent.com.au/products/ang...
every time Google docs offers to “help me write”
A thread about a much discussed piece of art I did not understand when it came out and took me years to really comprehend. Ursula lays it all out, here.
Goodbye, Akihabara Building 1! Fans father to say farewell to Sega's first-ever arcade in Japan's gamer mecca.
Using one photo already on your phone, what is the announcement tomorrow at 2?
I was thinking this could be good until I got to the part where it says it has mozzarella and cream cheese.
Drop an old person you are going to turn into in the future I saw this pic a good number of years ago and thought “that’s what I aspire to in my old age!”
I saw this posted and thought that it was finally streaming, but I guess we still have a week to go.
Checked out a set of language learning CDs from the library yesterday. Now to see what I have around the house that can still play CDs.
People literally bled & died fighting against corporate interests, robber barons, corrupt local & state politicians, cops & hired killers, & the federal government & US military for better working conditions for the rest of us so reflect on that today for just a bit while you're doing whatever else.
Hey hey hey! My new novel Everybody's Perfect is available to preorder with a release date of June 30th 2026! (I'm linking to Amazon but you can preorder it from anywhere good books are sold) www.amazon.com/Everybodys-P...
Happy Labor Day, comrades 🫡
I just searched publicrecords.copyright.gov for my name to see which of my works had copyrights registered. Two of the five in the list are mine, but I'm not telling you which two.
youtu.be/eW6oQVDBa0M
Much like "crab", industrial music is constantly re-evolving from first principles basically anywhere where there's a bunch of metal and plastic laying about
Oh, I agree that it’s a good onomatopoetic word. If only it didn’t already have a slang meaning. It made me do a double take when I turned the page.
I… just don’t think I’d have gone with that particular sound effect for falling down in the snow.
I’ve never watched any of the Traitors incarnations. (Although I have listened to the ‘90s punk band The Traitors.) However, the promo pic of Siobhán McSweeney makes me want to check out the Irish one. She just looks cool.
I knew that but totally spaced on the association when I posted that. Thanks!
Worth noting that images of police eating Cup Noodle was a historic moment in marketing for Nissin
ACAB includes instant noodles
Workin on something
Japan is trying to lure more talent into its armed forces amid concern over China, but it has been hard to convince enough young Japanese to enlist.
THIS. IS. SO. COOL.
Watched Takashi Ishii's GONIN (1995) earlier this month & it's now among my favourite heist/gangster movies. Like if Morrison's DOOM PATROL were transformed into a non-fantastical but beautifully batshit Japanese crime thriller. Just awesome, top first-watches of the year.
I kinda need that Pan Tera shirt now
Of course, I'm sure I saw this (from 1979) before I'd ever heard the Beatles, too. www.youtube.com/watch?v=WmVd...
I recently listened to the song “Mr. Popeil” for the first time in decades and it really made me laugh. Not necessarily for the song itself, which was still good, but for my younger self who completely missed the B-52-ness of it even though it’s so B-52s.
I listened to a lot of Weird Al growing up, to the extent that my first exposure to a lot of songs were through parodies. (Something Baudrillardian about that, perhaps.)
Good find! Anything new by Sharon Kinsella is definitely worth a read.
Hey, it mentions the Purdue Anime Club. I went to some of their meetings about a year after this article.
I'm wondering if Guillermo del Toro's "Frankenstein" has any specific references to "The Spirit of the Beehive", since it was an influence on him and watching "Frankenstein" is a significant plot point. ("The Spirit of the Beehive" was also an influence on Mamoru Oshii's "Angel's Egg".)
I mean, who would write that in this day and age? And why would a respectable publisher like Tuttle release it?
I don’t remember having an issue with the nerdy content, but everything else about that book seemed so wrong in almost an old-fashioned way. Like that the Japanese “think in a different way from us….their minds work on the basis of images.”
Happy 50th Anniversary Truck Rascals! トラック野郎50周年おめでとうございます！
Japan’s Sanseitō Party, which leapt from fringe to 14 parliamentary seats in July, is hosting Trump ally Charlie Kirk for a sold-out Tokyo event. The party’s anti-immigrant, anti-LGBTQ, agenda highlights growing ties between U.S. and Japanese far-right movements.
But my ruh-self is my only self.
thinking about the fast, efficient driverless cars we should’ve had decades ago
The first author listed wrote a book called "A Geek in Japan" which describes the Japanese as "little 'non-thinking' ants who simply copy and improve what they see" among other choice observations. I would never select anything by him for any library.
Somehow this escaped my corner a bit- I had multiple people question me on my wording. This book is fetishization and neocolonialism, and more specifically is a misrepresentation of the term ikigai. I don’t generally select titles like this for a school library, because it perpetuates harm.
“What should we put on this tshirt from a movie that features tricked-out trucks?” “I know! Let’s go with black text on a white background. That’ll draw them in!”
No, because they know then we'd have the ultimate "I'm not angry, I'm just very, very disappointed" conversation.
Just in time for Labour Day, our list of stories depicting labour unions in science fiction and fantasy has reached 250 entries. Thanks to @joachimboaz.bsky.social for all the help on this. List as HTML: hugoclub.blogspot.com/2018/12/orga... List as Google Doc: docs.google.com/spreadsheets... 1/
If not for Chicago, we might not have Labor Day. Keep your eyes peeled on Monday for a much longer video where I dive into the history of unionization, violent strike suppression, and workers’ victories in Chicago, and how they impacted workers across the country.
Our mural wall in West Belfast has just been completed, with the top finished by artists Micky Doc and Marty Lyons. Isreal is committing a genocide against the Palestinian people. FREE PALESTINE
Heard a commercial on the radio for a “long weekend sale” this weekend. Is the word “labor” too woke now?
I do keep hearing good things about Andor. I may watch it someday. Picard was a bit of a slog at times, but I am glad I finished it.
The Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a shot of a comet visiting our solar system from another star. Discovered last month by a telescope in Chile, the comet (known as 3I-Atlas) predates our solar system by more than three billion years. buff.ly/OErbZi1 #ShareGoodNewsToo
I grew up on Star Wars and used to be all about it back in the day. But I haven't watched anything SW since The Rise of Skywalker.
The first two seasons weren't too bad. But this currently-airing third season has just been awful.
I'm getting such whiplash going from the highs of Prodigy and Lower Decks to the absolute lows of Section 31 and Strange New Worlds.
Received many DMs asking me about this week’s #strangenewworlds episode and why I won’t be reviewing it with @strangenewpod.com - here’s the short (and the long?) answer 🖖🏾 #startrek #startrekpodcast PART 1 :
This came to me in a vision
My "Butlerian Jihad Now!" T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions etc etc
Space science is never joyless. But yeah, other than that I endorse the first one.
"Pat, why do you carry that ridiculous 600mm lens on long hikes?" Buddy, I can see mountains reflected in the eyes of a trailside pika.
I'd already basically given up on this season of Star Trek SNW. (I'd made it through the first four eps.) From what I'm reading about the most recent episode, I certainly won't be picking it back up.
lmao banger
It also makes sense that this kind of mental conditioning is being led by someone from the business school
And “thought partner” - such a disgusting euphemism.
“One great example is you have a decision coming up and you can kind of outlay some context of the decision, what’s going on, your role…. Do you have any creative solutions? Things like that can really help as a thought partner”. Or you can, you know, actually think for yourself.
Some good news to wake up to this morning. I’m always pleasantly surprised when boards and councils actually listen to the people. www.basedinlafayette.com/p/1700-acre-...
For the eleventy billionth time: Attacks on science funding and science jobs in the United States don’t mean that science will just move elsewhere. It means a lot less science for everyone. There aren’t enough jobs or funding everywhere else )combined) for US scientists to just move.
We were going to do another big marketing stunt for THE TOXIC AVENGER UNRATED. Instead, Toxie, whose life was upended by crushing medical bills, has joined forces with Undue Medical Debt to erase at least $5 million in un-payable medical debt for those who need it most. Learn more:
GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995) Now playing on the Criterion Channel! Adapted from the manga by Masamune Shirow, this landmark cyber-tech thriller has taken its place as one of the most renowned Japanese animation films of all time.
W/o downloading anything new, where are you mentally?
To be fair, Cracker Barrel has been around for 14 times longer than the Confederacy was.
The video does have English subtitles.
A short video on Senga Kamejiro and the Fukutsu-kan, a museum about his life and work, as well as postwar Okinawan history. I'm definitely going if I can return to Naha someday. I wish this "Man the American Military Feared Most" were more well-known in English. youtu.be/RvR4-QF4sXc?...
So much goodness there. Shame about the Pop Chaser, though.
These just don’t phase me.
So ridiculous
It would be a successful movie, too, because it would get only good reviews and no pans.
Maybe it’s reassuring that even if I’d gotten a job in academia, odds are good that I’d have been let go by now anyway.
Marx: he rarely misses.
i don't super disagree with the piece but i am 100% fucking tired of administrators and STEM colleagues being complicit in the destruction of the humanities and then reinventing what we do
this reads like a business professor reinventing what the Humanities have been doing - continuously - since indeed the 14th century did you know, for example, that you could talk to your students and ask them to respond in class to questions you pose?????? www.nytimes.com/2025/08/26/o...
Hard to convince younger generations, but for decades, Republicans went on and on about how two of the worst things imaginable were (1) state intervention in the market and (2) DC using federal troops against US states; both so bad the people should be ready for armed rebellion in case it happens.
Watching Tachiguishi-Retsuden, such a thing exists it seems--weird Oshii, best Oshii.
Gosenzo-sama Banbanzai! (If only we had a legit release of it over here.)
We also had a Hangman word game whose opening theme was “Funeral March of a Marionette”. The first time I saw Alfred Hitchcock Presents years later, I was like “Hey, that’s the theme to Hangman!”
TI-99/4A. We had a bunch of off brand games like Parsec and Alpiner and Munch Man. We eventually got the speech synthesizer hardware, and I’ll still sometimes think “onward and upward” (from Alpiner) in the cadence of that voice when I’m beginning a task. Oh, I learned Basic on it as well.
I started shortly after it premiered, but I finally finished watching all of Vikings and Vikings: Valhalla. Yes, I’ve been watching in small chunks, and it’s taken me over 10 years.
My high school journalism teacher started calling me “Ruh Dog” and the name stuck for a little while. “You know, like the cartoon,” she said.
Corporate animation like this fascinates me.