No matter how much Covid mutates or what variant is prevalent…. Respirators will still work! A good quality mask like an N95 gives you excellent protection against airborne viruses like Covid. It’s never too late to mask up. Every infection delayed or prevented is a win.

“'One thing we have learned is that whenever you say that something is unique to humans, we always find that that’s not the case,' said Wenda Trevathan, a biological anthropologist and professor emerita at New Mexico State University who studies childbirth."

A colleague pointed me to this helpful reminder on the problem of lost library collections in Japan, amid the closure or amalgamation of smaller universities struggling to fill enrollments. Some "last copies" of published works are at risk of being tossed out. current.ndl.go.jp/ca2098

Might be the greatest opening paragraph of anything ever.

**Postdoc positions** Kyoto University has opened up applications for the Hakubi Project, due May 17, 2026. This is a cream of the crop postdoc ("all fields, from basic to applied"), 5 (FIVE!) years, great research budget. Please apply or let others know! www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/recruitme...

Translations of my books have been published by 30+ different foreign presses. Only one of them, Galmuri based in Seoul, South Korea, sends me photographs of the workers and labor processes that make the books. Here is their beuatiful and elegant forthcoming edition of *Villains of All Nations*.

The Kyoto sakura bloomage continues apace in Gosho.

This is a great list of techniques for getting real information out of a Google search and avoiding AI slop and paid results. (One thing not included is that if you add "-ai" to a search, you block the AI summary) cardcatalogforlife.substack.com/p/google-has...

📣 🎉Today is the official release day of my book, even tho many of you have it in hand already. 🙏 to all who purchased. Availability: Amazon has the paper w/ discount, Bookshop/OUP on back order. Should be an e-version that is missing. I will check w/ my press. More: www.annaolaw.com/book-migrati...

Over eight decades after philosopher Tosaka Jun died in prison, his writings remain helpful. Drawing upon Tosaka's work, Yunchen Tian cautions that the discourse of Japan's "foreigner problem" should be understood as more than perceived grievances against foreign residents and tourists.

Come work with me and the rest of the wonderful @greenhouseuis.net community! #envhist #envhum

Sakura just getting started at Hirano Shrine

Back at the Ishikawa Prefectural Library and there really is nothing like it where I’m from, the capital city of a rich province of 5M people. Ishikawa is 1.1M. Stunning architecture, with a lot of thought put into the collection, and how the collection is presented.

NEW PHD FUNDING: Research the National Maritime Museum's remarkable oral history collection of merchant seamen (1890s-1950s) with NMM's Lucy Dale & Dr Hannah Stockton & University of Portsmouth's @bradbeaven.bsky.social & @karlbell.bsky.social www.findaphd.com/phds/project... . Start date: Oct 2026

1/ Paul Ehrlich died this week at 93. The takes split into hagiography and dismissal. But the interesting question isn't whether he got it right, he didn't, it's why he got it wrong, and who was asking the right questions instead 🧵

5/ Ehrlich reduced human society to population biology. Commoner brought ecology to political economy. Where Ehrlich saw carrying capacity, Commoner saw feedback loops between capital, technology and nature. The difference in method produced the difference in politics.

I've posted a linked up list of tables of contents for the 1944-5 issues of Azad Hind, the Japanese-supported Indian National Army and Provisional Government of India's newspaper, issues of which can be found on Internet Archive and Wikimedia Commons: froginawell.net/azad-hind/

While researching the history of bringing bikes on buses, I just discovered something: in the mid 20th century, buses in Australia and New Zealand had hooks on the front or back for mothers to hang prams off! Bus pram hooks were apparently a unique NZ+Aus phenomenon, found nowhere else in the world.

**Postdoc positions** Kyoto University has opened up applications for the Hakubi Project, due May 17, 2026. This is a cream of the crop postdoc ("all fields, from basic to applied"), 5 (FIVE!) years, great research budget. Please apply or let others know! www.hakubi.kyoto-u.ac.jp/en/recruitme...

Was hearing a weird amount of pop culture critics throwing shade on Sinners this past week, but I have to say, after hearing Ryan Coogler lifting up educators & saying he's honoured by professors who might teach his work, if you still don't understand why people dig this man, you're choosing not to.

Deadly Divide will be out next month and you can now pre-order it from UNC press using this 30% off discount code: 01SOCIAL30

Becoming oddly interested in the physical infrastructure of the US Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Fascinating Bloomberg piece from 2023. www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

A post on Twitter reminds people of something many have forgotten: When the Great East Japan Earthquake happened 15 years ago, LINE - now Japan's most popular messaging app with 100M users - didn't exist. It was actually developed in response to the disaster.

🚨Call for Papers! 3–4 September, Universität Augsburg: 2-day workshop on "theorising uncharismatic species in environmental history". Who are they? Where are their voices in the historical record? What insights do they offer to the field of environmental history? Be there! Abstracts due 15/05/2026!

Fully funded PhD studentship: ‘Recording nature and writing the self: time, entomology and the archive in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries’. Closes 3 May. With Ruth Abbott, Staffan Müller-Wille, Ed Turner & me. @theul.bsky.social @zoologymuseum.bsky.social www.ccc.cam.ac.uk/initiatives/...

On the 15th anniversary of the 3.11 earthquake, thinking about my visit to the Tsunami Memorial Museum in Ishinomaki last November, with my colleague and co-researcher Matthew Booker. We were struck by how much energy is being put into telling the stories of the disaster and the region.

Hear about the newest books on #JapaneseEmpire at #AAS2026 on March 14, 5:45-7:15pm, with Kristin Roebuck, @hannahjshepherd.bsky.social, Holly Stephens, and me, Laura Hein as mod @asianstudies.org @columbiaup.bsky.social @ucpress.bsky.social @uchicagopress.bsky.social @yalepress.bsky.social

Call for Papers: Women’s Fieldwork and the Making of Nineteenth Century Natural History Collections We seek articles to complete a special issue on women’s field collecting, and contributions to nineteenth century natural history for Nuncius. #Histsci #NaturalHistory #WomensHistory #Fieldwork

🧵1/x Lots of blunt and contradictory conclusions by (de)generative AI on extent of #DEI in #AsianStudies projects that had received funding from #NEH

Americans have no idea how much the world is shook, folks. Here in Thailand they have a running tally of how many days' worth of fuel the country has left.

The "digital environment," doesn't just refer to the affordances of the platform, but the structures of moderation (including TOS) that organize such an environment. Environments are more than digital structures; they include the social structures of the platform, which folks keep ignoring.

Nice visit to the last day of the Taishõ visual arts exhibition at the Asahi Ōyamazaki Villa Museum of Art. I'm no film production scout, but my vote goes here as a future Knives Out shooting location.

Amid unusual great white shark sitings that disrupted ama breath-divers' fisheries activities in southern Mie Prefecture for weeks in 1991, an illustration of a shark trying to convince nearby sea creatures that they have little to fear from a great white: "Humans are the scariest of all."

The Kumano Sea coast, outlined by and inscribed upon a skipjack tuna, 1984

Back in the old stomping grounds/waters for the day...

A fascinating conversation, with huge resonances for those of us who work on histories of technology and environment

1/ Calling all ECRS - we have 4x 3 year post docs on Multispecies Mutualisms working with us at Sheffield. Don't want to read through all the stuff to work out if its right for you? Here is a short video explainer 🎥 digitalmedia.sheffield.ac.uk/media/Multis...

Tomorrow at HKU! All are welcome. A talk by Chris Tsui Shuen Lau: "From Ainu Cosmologies to Imperial Symbols: The Colonial Narratives of Mt. Asahidake in Hokkaido, 1900s-1930s" Date: March 4, 2026 (Wed) Time: 17:00-19:00 Venue: CRT-5.41, 5/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, HKU

Higher ed programs should teach more about history/philosophy/sociology of science

my favourite history paper has to be "Fanon and the CIA Man" on American Historical Review because it's such a fascinating snapshot of Cold War-era colonialism and anti-colonialism: it's extremely readable academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

British supermarket chain Waitrose suspending the sale of mackerel to take "a decisive stand against overfishing". International Council for the Exploration of the Sea says the Northeast Atlantic mackerel population has fallen so drastically its ability to recover is not guaranteed u.afp.com/Su4E

最高気温40℃以上の日の名称について気象庁がアンケートを実施しています。すぐ選んで送信できるのでぜひ。 www.jma.go.jp/jma/press/26...

Going to be talking about punk rock and Kyoto on 16 March as part of the Kyoto lectures series. Come join me in person or online

Students feel like they can’t enroll in majors like Af-Am Studies and WGSS because they’re getting messages from all sides that they’re not remunerative. And yet they desperately want the knowledge, so classes are full. That seems to be the situation everywhere.

New article! 'Samplers of the marine environment: Knowing the oceans with seabirds, 1958–Present', by Oscar Hartman Davies.

My first proper blog post for @globalmarhist.bsky.social 🙌🏻 This is the source I repeatedly return to when I teach others about Caribbean slavery. There is so much that can be gleaned from this source alone. My post discusses some of the features!

Latest issue of Journal of Asian Studies contains the forum "Digital Humanities in/and Asian Studies," edited by Kate McDonald and me. It features contributions from scholars working in South, Southeast, & East Asian studies, as well as in Asian-American studies. read.dukeupress.edu/journal-of-a...

That amazing feeling when a kindly museum director calls to follow up about my query--by apologizing for the vast amounts of uncatalogued documents that I'll have to sift through. Now I await a visit to thumb through the archives and chat with someone who has curated them for over half a century...

What oral histories can teach us about effective environmental research – @angecass.bsky.social & Paul Merchant for @lseimpactblog.bsky.social @renewbiodiversity.bsky.social @britishlibrary.bsky.social

reminder that Miles Macleod, @federicoboem.bsky.social @yjerden.bsky.social & I have a call for papers out for a special issue on scientific "bubbles" with Studies in History and Philosophy of Science. nominal deadline July 15, plus or minus. www.sciencedirect.com/special-issu...