A reminder: No one has to obey orders to commit war crimes. If you're in a position to refuse, please consider reaching out for help. You can reach the GI Rights Hotline at 1-877-447-4487. girightshotline.org @captmarkkelly.bsky.social @slotkin.senate.gov @deluzio.house.gov @goodlander.house.gov

Countdown—14 more days to register to vote before the primaries!

Depluralize a movie: Man in Black—but I suppose that one already exists

Devastated to discover tonight that spouse and I finally caught up to For All Mankind.

Boring opinion: Mr. Incredible would actually save more lives if he stuck to helping Insuracare customers get their claims covered against the company’s wishes. THAT’S the hero we need.

Boring opinion: Mr. Incredible would actually save more lives if he stuck to helping Insuracare customers get their claims covered against the company’s wishes. THAT’S the hero we need.

On Trans Day of Visibility, RJL honors Japan’s two openly trans Akutagawa winners—Chiya Fujino and Li Kotomi—and reminds everyone that Li was outed against her will. Many of Japan’s most important writers made a statement supporting Li and other members of the LGBTQ+ community. 👇

Happy trans day of Visibility! I'm a trans refugee artist, and I'm proud to be out even though it cost me a lot. I embrace all my trans siblings! Dear cis people, tip or support trans people not only today but as much as you can! And FUCK this damn woman and her books!

Indivisible ATL was out on Atlanta’s Beltline today with Georgia Voices United, Intown Women’s Resistance, Black Lives Matter East ATL Grassroots, and Fulton Dems. Check out the resources we were sharing to help folks find their fight. Change takes all of us! drive.google.com/file/d/1KN8Z...

Post a Jedi... wrong answers only:

Check out RJL's freshly-updated list of New and Upcoming Releases from Japan—now featuring 100% more Kiki sequels! Kiki and the New Magic by Eiko Kadono Trans Emily Balistrieri "As Kiki faces increasingly perilous tasks, her friendships with Jiji and Tombo are put to the test..."

Over the next few days, Indivisible ATL is going to be sharing info about accessible, on-line No Kings events. Please add if you know about one we’ve missed!

Come demand the release of Rodney Taylor, tomorrow, outside the Atlanta ICE field office: indivisible.org/events/rally...

We need your help to make our No Kings Beltline event a success! Please consider donating today. We’re especially hopeful to defray the costs for our partners—Georgia Voices United, Black Lives Matter Grassroots East Atlanta Dekalb + Intown Women’s Resistance. secure.actblue.com/donate/indiv...

My grandmother ate a steady diet of processed fast food and died of colon cancer. 🤷

Stephen King’s Nightshift. I was 11. No one would tell me what you read when you caught up with the end of Young Jedi Knights and Animorphs. I asked!

Queer Digital Graveyard is a digital memorial for LGBTQ+ websites of the early internet. I found this through @elan.place's newsletter "Escape the Algorithm". Via @johnwest.bsky.social.

Allow me to present Biz Town. “In JA BizTown, 6th grade students are able to interact within a simulated economy and take on the challenge of starting and running a business.” This is ATL, so Chick-Fil-A is all over it. 14yo was assigned the career Chick-Fil-A CFO. At least lunch was provided?

To the best of my knowledge, the most snow Atlanta has received in my 40-year lifetime was also in March. This is me with an anatomically-correct Cinderella snowwoman built with the assistance of my not-so-feminist father in 1993. Almost 3 feet of snow—this photo is from days after the blizzard.

Book 49 of 2026 - The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes. This was a reread for me, a #ReadAloud with my teen after her lackluster #poetry unit in school. I wasn’t awed the second time through like I was the first but I still label it essential reading and give it five stars. #BookSky

It is firmly spring here in Atlanta and this afternoon the sky was so fucking blue and the slanting light so gorgeous that I had to take photos of almost everything.

My Atlanta Public School sixth grader already has assignments that require the use of LLM technology. She is deeply disheartened by how little she is learning in the class.

I keep coming back to a poem Takane Suzuki presented in the #AAS2026 panel "Beyond the Salaryman: Work + Gender in Postwar + Contemporary Japanese Literature + Fiction." No, it's not junbungaku—but it's thoughtful and still packs a punch in 2026. Grateful she granted permission for me to share.

I was moved by this poem from a forgotten Japanese labor newspaper. The author, Ihara Ayoko, did clerical work at a bank in the 50/60s. As a woman, she had new freedom to work outside of the home—yet her career would always be circumscribed. Even so, she finds a simple joy in labor + solidarity.

I jumped to another panel at #AAS2026 where #노슬기 is discussing GI underground newspapers during the 1970s. Korean Free Press, and Demand for Freedom (Okinawa) were two of such papers, they may have been primarily written by black GIs. Articles often showed minority solidarity

Used a break in my #AAS2026 conference schedule to explore the Nitobe Memorial Garden at UBC. (Tricky for the cab driver, but he was a trooper.) The garden is gorgeous—tranquil and lush. So many buds on the trees and deep down things just thrusting out of the earth.

OMFG. We knew this was the end plan, but the metaphor he chose makes it even worse. 😩

I HATE Elf. The only reason it works is that Will Ferrell was made for the part—which was apparently conceived in 1993 with Jim Carrey or Chris Farley in mind?!

Despite (or to spite?) my family’s claims I would only be eating Japanese food on this trip, dinner tonight was some super authentic hand-pulled curry noodles at Vancouver’s Happy Noodle House.

If a protest or march with a group of 1000s isn't where you’re most powerful, join Indivisible ATL, Intown Women’s Resistance, and Georgia Voices United for a one-mile walk on along the Beltline. We’ll be passing out materials + inviting fellow Atlantans into the pro-democracy movement. 10am-1pm

On a solo work-cation to the AAS conf in Vancouver, I decided to treat myself to an omikase dinner. I planned to dine alone and reflect on the quality of the food. Six glasses of sake in, I was sharing a bottle of someone else’s birthday champagne and teaching everyone to toast with おつかれさまです! 😅

I feel so seen. 😅

Just used my #AAS2026 discount to visit the Vancouver Art Gallery. We Who Have Known Tides is a gorgeous and moving collection of work from the Indigenous Art Collection.

March 11, 2011 was a day of unspeakable loss. Yet some of Japan’s most important contemporary writers used their voices to support victims + even influence the government response. You can learn about the Triple Disaster + the first fiction to come out of the tragedy with the RJL podcast.

HOLY SHIT I've been waiting for this for months. Watch the trailer to get a feel for how wild this is gonna be: www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBAk...

As we get closer to #AAS2026, a number of scholars on the Diversity and Equity Committee panel "Pedagogy Under Threat (in the U.S. & Beyond)" have found that they cannot attend the conference due to visa issues. We are therefore encouraging scholars to stop by and share in this important discussion.

I’m not sure if Miss Ruki is neurodivergent or just living her best life? “Miss Ruki finishes projects weeks earlier than her boss thinks she does, so she spends most of her time reading books from the library… like the anti-war classic Twenty-Four Eyes or American horror novel Rosemary’s Baby.”

En route to #AAS2026 and noticing the SEATAC is well-stocked with copies of Uketsu’s novels, all translated by @jimrion.com!

I’m not sure if Miss Ruki is neurodivergent or just living her best life? “Miss Ruki finishes projects weeks earlier than her boss thinks she does, so she spends most of her time reading books from the library… like the anti-war classic Twenty-Four Eyes or American horror novel Rosemary’s Baby.”

Immigrants and advocates say rising ICE enforcement in Georgia is leaving families separated and struggling. https://atlanta.capitalbnews.org/rodney-taylor-ice-detention-anniversary/

I’m headed for #AAS2026 on Wednesday! I’m hoping folks will share with me—What do you wish reviewers knew about the art of translation? You can tag @readjapaneseliterature.com.

I’m headed for #AAS2026 on Wednesday! I’m hoping folks will share with me—What do you wish reviewers knew about the art of translation? You can tag @readjapaneseliterature.com.

Happy International Women’s Day! “Every woman has a well-stocked arsenal of anger potentially useful against those oppressions, personal + institutional, which brought that anger into being. Focused with precision it can become a powerful source of energy serving progress and change.” —Audre Lorde

If you’re upset, stop apologizing to internet strangers and do something! Join your local Indivisible group. Dig for your local organizers building anti-ICE infrastructure and help them. Get trained as a poll watcher. Use 5Calls daily. There are hundreds of ways to fight back. Pick one!

Anybody else notice the Trump folks in their lives moving from Fox News zealots to, “Who even knows what’s true anymore?”

AI is incapable of understanding the human emotion of art. It cannot understand how words impact these human emotions. When I was translating Showa: A History of Japan, there were MANY times I was crying at my keyboard. My job was to make you cry at the same time. AI cannot cry. It cannot do this.

Georgia just lost our only genuinely progressive gubernatorial candidate. 😭 (Apologies for the paywalled article—the headline is the important bit.)

Celebrate Black history and leadership by exploring how past organizers built lasting movements. Transformative Justice Coalition’s Barbara R. Arnwine will unpack systemic inequities and share lessons to strengthen today’s movement-building and leadership: www.mobilize.us/indi...

Anyways, today is a good day to follow news outlets that explicitly disallow the use of Generative AI Slop: go.bsky.app/8cn1XfT

Bc it would be so much better if pregnant women with perinatal depression killed themselves and their unborn babies instead. Very few things will get me ENRAGED but taking SSRIs away from pregnant women will do it. Life. Saving. Tool. MY life. Hands off.