Antibalas, from Brooklyn. Bringing the fuck ice energy.

And one more thing. Students. If you have a professor who is, for some reason, outsourcing their own job to ChatGPT....drop the class. If they tell you to "ask ChatGPT" for sources, drop the class. Because they apparently don't know their own discipline well enough to teach it.

this is what the nail girlies are up to

Still time to file and throw a tiny spoke in their wheels--return rate of the Anthropic lawsuit letters is apparently 20%, let's keep it tracking upward!

New Japan Sound Studies org launch & book launch~Sonic Japan Research Association (SJRA) The Advent of Sound in Japanese Cinema: A Handbook. Tuesday, 27 January 2026 Time: 19:30 JST / 11:30 CET / 10:30 GMT / 05:30 EST Format: Online roundtable discussion via Zoom. www.sonicjapan.eu

My Kurosawa book spotted in the wild at City Lights, in very good company!!!

🚨 BREAKING: Over 100 clergy at Target HQ in Downtown Minneapolis demanding justice #ICEOutOfMN #ICEOutForGood #ReneeGood 🎶 “We can stay here all day, we shall not be moved. We are shopping elsewhere, we shall not be moved.” 🔗 Watch live: www.facebook.com/share/v/1ALf...

...a cool cratedigger moment at Amoeba with Arooj Aftab. www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhKN...

From a good friend in Minneapolis: "Target is allowing ICE to stage in their parking lots, use their restrooms, and abduct people from inside their stores - so if you weren’t boycotting already, now is the time." They were staging in Chicago as well.

interior monologue / daydream from an 1890 magic lantern (gentō shashin) slide. Many of the dreams are about actors and performers... ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/coll...

"UCLA Athletics has operated at a deficit for six consecutive years, accumulating $219 million in losses." in the weeds here but good luck to the committee writing the new document promoting 'best practices for service' among UC faculty...budget cuts for teaching, while the athletics debt balloons.

another super interesting archive from the People's History people in the Inland Empire.

Here's a discount code for my book coming out at U MN Press. Pre-orders mean a lot, so I would be grateful if you consider ordering and/or recommending to fellow cinephiles! Get 30% off when you pre-order at upress.umn.edu or z.umn.edu/LongTake30 using code MN94910. Offer good through Feb. 1, 2026.

Positive blurb from Kirkus Review for my upcoming book! PM me for a 30% discount code, cheaper than Amazon ;) (I'm new at this stuff for an "everybody audience" so maybe I should post?) . www.upress.umn.edu/978151790329...

This applies to AI people too. Don't fuck them.

UCR is having a synthesizer petting zoo on Jan 15, noon. this is giving me incredibly charming images of people playing gently w keys as they would with little lambs, goats, etc. Without messing with actual animals so win-win! Early enough in the quarter that it is not "therapy synthesizers," lol.

If you are a resident of California, the state now has a portal where you can demand deletion of your personal data from 500+ registered data brokers with a single request form, for free. consumer.drop.privacy.ca.gov

NYC Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani sworn into office

They're going to *throw out* one-of-a-kind NASA archives?! Not even a year since the Inauguration & we're already at the 2nd-time-as-farce version of the burning of the Library of Alexandria.

Just got an ad on Facebook promoting the screening at Uplinkーone of Tokyo's premiere venues for indie and doc film--of the $40MM Brent Ratner propaganda piece on Melania Trump. WTAF, am I misreading here? Ito Shiori is blocked but this crap lives? Uplink, I am shocked, truly--what is in it for you?

...there is an interesting Thing to be written on how mid-century pulp fiction has a second life in Asian places formerly occupied by the US. High & Low (Kurosawa) & Ed McBain, No Other Choice (Park Chan-wook) and Donald Westlake. Faulkner. Pulp & public-library books, not just Cold War and neo-lib.

...now to figure out how to smuggle this into a media studies course...

Any favorite film-related podcasts to recommend? Starting to do PR on my new/upcoming book--below, spotted in the wild at the PFA, in Berkeley, where I first became an actual moviegoer!--and I've never really done interviews before on the interviewee end, trying to get a good feel for possible vibe.

Have any translated selections of the Ozu China diaries appeared in English anywhere? Rumor has it they're a wild ride...

Finding this plug-in, which identifies all signatories to the Harper’s cancel culture letter, to be very useful in figuring out who was then and likely will forever be full of shit

long shot, but if you are in Singapore go see this Sergei Paradjanov retrospective @ the Asian Film Archive. almost-never seen stuff, both before and after The Color of Pomegranates. A show w outtakes of Sayat Nova/Pomegranates will have live music. I saw Pomegranates restored this year...stunning.

...a big tumbleweed just rolled up to block in my neighbor's car. But meanwhile, merry holidays and happy (accidentally beneficial companion) planting for the new year to all!

Japanese (language) use picks up on bluesky...yay .

john waters' 1995 christmas card with steve buscemi as him

I love the choice of name for Santa--Santakurō--which implies [though the 九"ku" or 9 character"] there may be 8 older male sibling Santas, which may smooth over some transport difficulties & raise pleasing images of many flying Santas, if it also raises some questions about this very large family...

lol, only time will tell! 🔥🐎

note to self: powdered sugar and katakuriko might look the same, squeak the same, and even behave the same when cooking or frying, but they do not taste the same. But "dessert" kung pao tofu can be saved with a bit of vinegar...

imagine having an actual evil twin

For maybe related (post-Epstein) reasons, I've noticed a resurgence on indie radio/Internet channels/covers of the old Bobbi Gentry song, "Fancy." The direness that leads the pretty girl's mother to send her off to the "gentlemen." Orville Peck's version is intense. www.youtube.com/watch?v=XHQ7...

OMG, all of "area studies" cut at UNC, this is huge. (The region-based centers like Asia, Middle East, African Studies...and more. The loss of Title VI and the $ that used to go with it taking a toll.

Kokuho is playing in PS this January--it only briefly breezed through LA. The same guy who made Hula Girls--Sang-il Lee. Broke all box office records in Japan, should be a blast...

This is grim. In our case (UC) these new policies (not AI, for the moment) affect evaluation, and are making staff newly responsible for "compliance." While faculty can often get off the hook with "oh it's so hard to wrangle all those kittens!" staff are on the hook in a different way.

NEW: 9 ex-DOJ lawyers who resigned from antisemitism investigations into UCLA and other UC campuses say they were pressured to find UC guilty of violations in a rushed and politically motivated process. One called it a "fraudulent and sham investigation." www.latimes.com/california/s...

live interview w Kubota Makoto of Les rallizes dénudés, on WFMU Fri 12pm, Jessica's show. What a treat!

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Enter long-term predatory contracts in schools. I had to go through an above-market price for a new laptop, after 7 years. Through a central procurement process, paying too much, with 4y of Apple care, found pretty much only in schools. Oh and a package of highly controversial surveillance software.

RIP Christine Choy, director of "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" A movie that could have taken place in the auto factory in my (Japan-bashing-era) town, later the site of the largest sexual harassment settlement in US history, at the time (1989)...here, a recent discussion at Indiana U...

I too expected a more exuberance and panorama, given the song. This show has characters in LA, but doesn't really "play itself" in the Thom Anderson sense. Characters mostly kind of pass through a few spaces, and no one is very curious about elsewhere...even itself as "elsewhere" to the other parts.

I just did a little doc for newbie grad students doing archival (mostly text and image) research in Japan (esp. those without the increasingly rare fellowships). The sheer info overload and bureaucracy can be overwhelming, but you can hit your stride with a bit of planning...suggestions welcome!

a month, and this is just in the news?!? with the irrationality of old drug laws, Okinawan jail near the bases is a fate I wish on no one, given the 99%+ conviction rate in Japan and local frictions, but at least the ambassador has diplomatic experience in addition to being a Trump supporter...

One of the greats of Japanese or any lit crit, really...Karatani Kojin as translated by Jon Abel.

An interesting gallery/social space model for books. Empty Shelf in Pasadena has little shelves for rent and curation, lots of different creator people. www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2025/11...

The proto-ghoul. Ghouling strong for 30 years.

Blue Boy Trial revisits a 1964 landmark case, focusing on the trans women whose testimonies shaped Japan’s approach to gender and identity for decades. We dive into one of the year's best, and most important films.