Thousands take legal action over ‘widespread pollution’ of three UK rivers

[imagine I wrote an article about the cultural politics of Heisei retro] www.youtube.com/watch?v=CEDA...

Kind of an unbelievable message. I was very happy owning some of the books in the collection, but this is genuinely baffling language and a miserable position that we should never expect from a publishing house. But eh, we know where they stand now.

River abstraction has soared 76% over two decades, threatening rivers, ecosystems and future supply. Water companies fall back on extracting more from already stressed rivers 4/4 www.theguardian.com/environment/...

The thing is that because I kept the same methodology even as a VTuber, it leads to really puzzling moments like this section of the video essay I'm working on. 🥹🥹 (And by the way, I'm sorry if I just don't write here at all, I'm just so busy and overworked with this project!)

The wording is just so funny to me, trying to still go for the centrist stance. I just don't think I'll come back to RA, especially with a fringe of the community being that bigoted. And it really pains me to say goodbye to what really lightened my retro journey.

NEW VIDEO! With the massive popularity of the Sakura Wars series, it was only a matter of time before it made its way to the big screen. The movie is also a surprisingly significant addition to the series canon! ... But is it any good? Likes + shares appreciated! youtu.be/7K_yognlz50

alright gonna put myself out there a little bit oh my lord I do believe I regret purchasing a book. i am not done and I intend to read far more of it to finish judging it but I'm already pretty upset.

Government involvement in regulating Japan’s rice market is different than the grain industry in the United States and much of Europe. We took a deep dive into Japan’s rice crisis, the government policies that failed farmers and consumers, and the powerful rice lobby: wapo.st/4mR4qqp

There's still so, so, so much to do, but I genuinely feel some euphoria with the intro being done. I need to tweek a few things, but I like the direction I have for this video essay. It's as calm and soothing as I hoped, and I just can't wait to continue working on it.

Murata Sayaka's work is always upsetting in different ways, and so far, her latest (世界99) is a synthesis of a number of her distressing themes. Reading it, I keep going back to what Hayakawa Chie said when I was interpreting for her: Being a girl is dangerous. To be a girl is to be at risk.

bed time

preparing for bed after the bath

An English fan translation of "Dead of the Brain 2" for PC-98 [NSFW 18+] has been released by "WINE": jackdbs.neocities.org/tl_dotb2

Un nouvel article sur mon blog, « De l'usage du nom yuri » : juliapopek.fr/2025-09-30-y... Où je discute sur le moment où le mot « yuri » commence à être utilisé pour parler des manga saphiques.

Back into the video editing mines, I almost forgot how tiring it was, and here we go for 90 minutes of rambling about fishing...

This is old and I would probably write it differently now (it's partially a personal essay about what I learned playing WotL), but I also wrote about WotL and Final Fantasy Tactics back in the day when I was a baby translator. www.rpgfan.com/feature/the-...

Looking at Silent Hill f post-release, I was so correct with this comparison. Don't think that women's literature in the 1960s was all sweet. It was chaotic, violence, full of passion, of cruelty. It's about reclaiming one's self, whatever it takes. I mean, read that:

Le contenu d’une conférence confidentielle de Peter Thiel a fuité : il y parle de l’Antéchrist, de la fin des temps — et du futur qu’il veut préparer pour l’humanité. Nous traduisons et commentons ces notes avec Arnaud Miranda et Jean-Benoît Poulle. legrandcontinent.eu/fr/2025/09/2...

UNTIL IT'S DONE, Ep. 2 When the Brownsville Clinic opened in 1916, it was the first birth control center in America. Its very existence felt impossible. For young women, it was a lifeline. 109 years later, the Clinic is long closed—but Brownsville mothers are still struggling.

💛 #ffxiv #ff14

September's blog is an in-depth comparison between Final Fantasy Tactics' OG translation and the WotL retranslation. To avoid spoilers, I've only covered the prologue. Can't wait to see what changes The Ivalice Chronicles brings to the table, too! annacairistiona.wordpress.com/2025/09/24/f...

One of my favorite poems since childhood, and a poem I share every #autumnequinox. By the 12thc warrior poet Xin Qiji 辛棄疾, sidelined during peacetime, demoted, drifting through a decade of minor posts in remote lands. Poetry, then, is that which is left unsaid. “My, what a cool and lovely autumn.”

Dear friends, As have become a habit, I mark each #autumnequinox by sharing a small poem by Xin Qiji. I also start my translation cycle of Chinese and Japanese poems and prose that mark the twenty-four lunisolar micro-seasons. Translation notes blogged here: #everynightapoem

Stuck inside my own personal hell.

This article about leprosy shows another dark story about eugenics in pre-and post-war Japan. After it was found Japan had very high rates of leprosy in the early 1900’s, the state started a program to forcefully sterilize those who carried the disease (cont.) digital.asahi.com/articles/AST...

Carolina Negri (ed.) - Storia della letteratura giapponese Dalle origini all'Ottocento À paraître chez Einaudi

BREAKING: the Sapporo Family Court has ruled that the fifth provision of the law for changing one's legal gender, which stipulates that the appearance of applicants' genitals should match with the gender/sex they seek to register, is unconstitutional. (1/?)

ロゼッタ🌟Rosalina

Interesting thing he's said multiple times in his presser is that the LDP is now a de facto opposition party, hence his emphasis on the lessons of 2009-2012.

New at Observing Japan: In his press conference launching his second leadership bid, Koizumi offered a different approach from his rivals — and his father — to rescuing the LDP from its troubles. open.substack.com/pub/observin...

Y'all Dr. #JeongAreum has published an awesome book about the #Sewol Tragedy. Dr. Jeong is one of the foremost thinkers at the intersection of #performancestudies and #Korean Studies, get the book. [U of Hawai'i Press] uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/beyond... (shipping now)

One of the sillier aspects of combating issues like this is that as the corpos start to realize they don’t actually have wide support, they start going silent. CS did the same after about the 3rd week The lack of feedback can have a pseudo-chilling effect on activists, don’t let it Do those dailies

We started developing Detective Instinct in 2022, and it looked like the first image here for a looong time. Feels like ancient history now that we're so close to the end 😭

In the '80s and '90s, CJ Cherryh questioned and critiqued our assumptions about how gender is expressed and understood, creating science fiction narratives that reflect trans identity and experience. It's time for a retrospective. reactormag.com/exploring-ge...

And yes, Furtwängler is also a controversial figure and there would be a lot to say about him staying with the Regime at that time. This article is a good primer on the topic: holocaustmusic.ort.org/politics-and...

And regarding the historical context, there's something to say about Furtwängler finding some solace in this last interpretation, after all of his objections against Nazism. Compare that to Karajan's opportunistic rally to the Nazi regime and how he translated that in his handling of the orchestra.

It's all too common to find people finding the Karajan's versions better, as they are technical prowess. But the humanity of Furtwängler, the imperfections, the sight of a man that wanted to find something more of this world—freedom—in the 9th. To me, this is truly unmatched.

Beethoven's 9th was mentioned in my Discord and I can't help but listen again to the 1954 Lucerne recording by Furtwängler. Tremendous work in this twilight, terribly slow fog at the beginning, but the bolt of lightning and the starred cast. youtu.be/254ksoIiU_s

I started playing The Invisible Guardian, the visual novel about a being a spy in 1939, during Japan's occupation of China. It's interesting how we're used to seeing Hitler in pop culture, but you rarely see Hirohito in this sort of stuff... I wonder if this is why the game is so region-locked...

Thrilled to finally get my hands on this brand new treatment of postwar Japanese history by one of the leading experts in our field, Simon Avenell! Can't wait to read this one!

Fujimori Shizuo (1891-1943)

ANNOUNCEMENT: Detective Instinct will be launching on Steam and Nintendo Switch... November 26th, 2025! 🤩 Uncover the story in this DS-inspired adventure game about a mysterious woman who goes missing on a train 🚃 Wishlist: store.steampowered.com/app/2689930/...

Polling for LDP elections can help to show how the wind is blowing, but as Jeff points out, only members get to vote (and are actually very hard to pin-point in polling data so these estimates are always very rough). Plus, the decisive second round is very heavily weighted towards lawmakers’ votes.

Nostalgic moment when Youtube recommends me again the third round of Su Yeon Kim at the 2020 Chopin Competition. Such gentleness and adoring deference in the sound, I love her Chopin so much. www.youtube.com/watch?v=RyTJ...

!!NEW VIDEO!! This time I cover Chunsoft’s Sound Novel franchise, a hugely important series in the history of Japanese video games that served as the progenitor to the visual novel genre and was a source of inspiration for all kinds of developers. WATCH - www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9BT...

How to burst the Israeli bubble | Noam Sheizaf

To be clear, they should also have a headsetless 2D option (and perhaps some color filters while we're at it), but yeah, seeing some of the vitriol people have had towards the very concept has been kinda weird to me.

The headset should absolutely be cheaper (which it is in most other regions, thanks tariffs!), but I think people it a waste and insisting you just use that emulator on 3DS are kinda missing the point. It's not for everyone, but I'm glad they went the extra mile for those who want it.

The VB in particular is so tied to its clunky, awkward, sometimes headache-inducing user experience that IMO it loses its identity if you play it any other way. There is value in recreating that experience as closely as possible to help preserve that context re: why the VB tanked in the first place.