Tell me more about these punks...

Montage: 2004, Christmas morning: I open lostprophets' new CD and my Mom says 'I think they're some local band?'* *They were from Wales not Minnesota dear reader 2025: child abuser (and singer) Ian Watkins gets stabbed in prison and dies Me, across time: Wow.

📣 Germany's close to reversing its opposition to mass surveillance & private message scanning, & backing the Chat Control bill. This could end private comms-& Signal-in the EU. Time's short and they're counting on obscurity: please let German politicians know how horrifying their reversal would be.

📢Call for Papers📢 ‘Folklore on the Move’: The Folklore Society’s annual conference 2026 in collaboration with the Elphinstone Institute, University of Aberdeen. In person conference: 5-7 Jun 2026; online conference day: 10 Jun 2026. Proposal deadline 14 Dec www.folklore-society.com/event/call-f...

A great place for some folklorists I know to pitch something right here

Keep this in mind when people claim cars mean business — closing Central #Madrid to cars over holidays resulted in a 9.5% boost in retail spending on its main shopping street: STUDY. There was also a 71% drop in air pollution. Via @carltonreid.com in @forbes.com. #citymakingmath #citiesforpeople

On October 14/15, we @modernjapanhist.bsky.social invite Prof. Ko En/Gao Yuan (Komazawa Univ.) to a book talk about the #Japanese #empire, #Manchuria, and #tourism. We will be joined by two discussants, Ken Ruoff and Araragi Shinzo. Mark your calendars!

Coming up tonight US and tomorrow morning Japan time.

Bicycle space urban with the comfort a adulty could so easily be Tokyo's new bike plan motto

the community guidelines in question here include issues pertaining to adult content and LGBT+ identity, so please do fill it out and give them a BIG piece of your mind!! kick up a fuss! we're not about to be pushed out!

Guess who got some old-old-old-rice? Reiwa 3 heck yeah

Saw Animals As Leaders opening for Meshuggah in 2013. The latter remains the most overpowering stage presence I've ever seen, hands down.

It's worth noting: JP Post will stop delivering mail to the US worth more than $100 or for sale. Documents, books, and correspondence are still going to be delivered but may incur de minimis charges (not sure where that stands right now) depending on the item.

This is the drug that is a 100% effective treatment for HIV. this is the one you've been seeing in the news. I would LOVE to see an in-depth discussion of exactly what "clinical, financial, and regulatory factors" are keeping them from essentially carrying a cure to a deadly disease.

Mark your calendars! The 2025 MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture will be given by Andrew Gordon (Harvard) on Monday, September 15, 2025, and is titled "After the Pandemic: Revising a Textbook and Rethinking History." REGISTER FOR ZOOM HERE: mjha.org/event-6201539

This is a call for application by the University of the Ryukyus to descendants of Okinawan immigrants residing in South America (only Brazil, Argentina, Peru and Bolivia) and Hawaii as auditing students or research students to study at Ryudai!

Hey Americans, if this passes you'll be uploading your ID to every social media and website to access it.

I'll bite, but full diaclosure Lollapalooza was never my crowd. 10 and 29.

Still see a lot of Japan focused folks using substack. Maybe this is enough of a reason to shift to other platforms? (see thread for suggestions)

Wow—the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention (named after Raphael Lemkin, a Holocaust survivor who coined the term genocide) says plainly: "No more discussions, meetings, reports, sessions, summits…IF YOU HAVE THE POWER, YOU MUST USE IT." "HISTORY WILL DETERMINE THE RECTITUDE OF YOUR ACTIONS."

It really shows how poisoned this election cycle is by the Sanseitō rhetoric that when I stopped to ask a guy to move his car out of the bike lane, my immediate thought afterward was, "I sure hope he hasn't voted yet." Never know how folks will react to a seeming foreigner saying follow the rules.

Buying one t-shirt ($20) from your favorite artist nets them more than 6,500 Spotify streams

Fun fact: the phrase "train of thought" predates mechanical trains

Fantastic thread of useful resources. I keep trying with my classes to frame these topics in terms students will resonate with, but I fear that instead it's just a bit 'old man yelling at cloud' instead. To make it stick there needs to be compelling reasons for students *not* to use it. These help.

Today is 山開きの日 (yamabiraki no hi), the opening of the mountains for summer. While some miniature Fuji (Fujidzuka) are climbable all year, some are restricted to special days like today. So I visited Ekoda Fuji just north of Ekoda Station for a quick hike before class! Today's topic? Traditions!

I'm utterly speechless. The article links the full list of cuts.

Thanks for the reminder @janemunday.bsky.social. Every summer, I repost this article DROWNING DOES NOT LOOK LIKE DROWNING. To date, I know of FOUR kids who were saved after someone who'd clicked on the link learnt how to spot actual drowning. Take time to read and pass on. slate.com/technology/2...

My local numbers at wastewaterSCAN. For context, in two weeks we’ve gone from one of our lowest points ever to near the peak of last year’s winter wave.

i know a lot else is going on, but US folks PLEASE call your senators - they are actively set on trying to ban trans healthcare on Medicaid entirely which trans people like me who are on Medicaid actively depend on for life-saving healthcare

Utterly embarrassing.

One of the kids hearing me play a Propagandhi song for my partner then commenced to request more, so we'll chalk that up as a win.

Out at Nano-Mugen Fest 2025 (first in 11 years!) and one of my kids falls asleep through ELLEGARDEN's entire set. Little one uses a sound machine while sleeping so I guess the bass air compression is comparable?

推しのコアラ

An urgent message from The Wire magazine Running an independent music magazine is becoming increasingly difficult. We need your support www.thewire.co.uk/in-writing/e...

Best time to ditch substack was previously: second best is today.

On Monday, May 26th! Shinnosuke Takahashi (Victoria U of Wellington) on his new book “The Translocal Island of Okinawa: Anti-Base Activism and Grassroots Regionalism” with Grant Jun Otsuki (U of Tokyo) and Simon Avenell (Australian National U.) Register for Zoom here: mjha.org/event-6125938

Just spoke with my CDC sources They said a new COVID-19 wave is hitting NYC and LA. Cases up~20% this week expected to rise further over the next month. Exactly 4 months since the January 20 peak, the virus is resurging.

Folks, it is all hands on deck now. The GOP is promising not to go home for recess until they pass the MAGA Murder Budget. Phonebank into key districts. Talk to your neighbors. Share your story. Do whatever you can. We have plenty of ways to help here:

Every time this man comes up, I am reminded of when he was President of OSU and an undergrad told me deadpan that he thought the man would sell the University for a corn chip.

KOSA is being reintroduced today. It's always been a dangerous censorship bill. But in this environment, with Trump weaponizing every aspect of the Federal government to suppress speech he doesn't like, KOSA is a catastrophic attack on human rights. We have to stop it. StopKOSA.com

Update: The TERRIBLE 10-Year Ban on State AI Regulations advanced House Committee. What does this mean? It means we BLAST the HELL out of their phones! Call your House Members AND Senators today! Called a few days ago? Call again! Tell them NO on 10-year State AI Regulation Ban! (Info in thread)

Oh dear. It finally happened and my US institutional access has expired. I guess that means Degree really is in hand.

Incredibly sad news for scholars of music and Japan. I never got the chance to meet him, but in developing a digital library for my own research, his work came up time and time again.

Absolutely strange to be thinking of any of hardcore tano*c or diverse system's releases as almost twenty years old but here we are.

REPOSTS APPRECIATED ‼️ Please if you're a queer european person or simply a decent human being, sign his petition to help fight LGTB+phobia in EU. Trans people are being persecuted, it ends in a month and in less than a minute you can help people to not lose rights eci.ec.europa.eu/043/public/#...

Pico Iyer? More like Peak Ire am I right?

See okay but, the thing is, the place of bike riders by law is incredibly vague. If the goal is to encourage safe cycling then there needs to be infrastructure for that and enforcement for all road users. Rules and fines don't make things safer - it just punishes people getting caught.

When I got to teach History of Rock one of the assignments I did was have them choose an album from one of the weeks and do a listening report. Don't have the details offhand but I remember wanting to turn that into a longer running series of coordinated listening experiences shared with classmates

The Trump administration wants to redefine “harm” under the Endangered Species Act so that destroying habitats no longer counts. It’s legalese for extinction. Public comments are open till May 19. Speak up or watch them vanish. #EPA #rightsofnature open.substack.com/pub/marygedd...

Do you have an archive, collection, recent acquisition, or project on Japan worth showcasing in a short article? 🗾 Contact us at digitalmediamanager(at)nccjapan(dot)org to reserve a slot for our Japanese Studies Spotlights! #NCCSpotlight You can read past articles at: guides.nccjapan.org/spotlights