We've still got Teruyo Nogami, Kurosawa's assistant-turned-documentarian, and who is 98. We've got Kyōko Kagawa at 93, youngster Akira Terao at 78. But for *STARS* - actors who led those hard-hitting dramas and trend-setting genre films of the golden age - this is it. This is the end. RIP Nakadai.

FIFA's politics and unchecked corruption are the main reason I stopped following international soccer. But it would be a good time to bring back that radical St. Pauli tournament of non-FIFA-aligned clubs. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIFI_Wi...

We Can Only Mokusatsu the Potsdam Declaration. We Must Fight the War to the Bitter End, Charlie Brown

Weird Al should have done a Spaceballs-inspired parody of The Killers' "Somebody Told Me": Somebody told me That you had a boyfriend Who looked like a girlfriend Who looked like my cousin's old college roommate

It's been a buggy few days around here.

First of all, no. Patrick Henry never said this and never would have said it, at least not about the US Constitution. Second of all, I am not on board for a party realignment that forgets the importance of the federal government in overriding states' resistance to expanding civil rights.

I spent years following soccer too closely, so I can say the framing of this article is absurd. This person attended multiple World Cups; the current prices are not higher than what he paid to do those trips. They're high, yes, but like all tickets are high. If he considered it, he can afford it.

"Better a pig than a fascist." (We painted rocks with the kids today.)

You could try to be as nightmarishly wrong as AI-generated alt text, and you would fail.

I admit, I didn't know Patricia Routledge was alive, let alone the last member of that cast. But I thought about that show just the other day. I was a Texan kid in the 90s who stayed up late to watch the British classics on PBS - Python, AYBS?, Red Dwarf, Keeping Up Appearances. A golden era of TV.

During the trial of the defendants in the Haymarket Square incident, 1886, one potential juror was excused for saying he wanted to see the evidence before he made up his mind. Apparently as a result of this, his boss later fired him for being "pro-anarchist."

Facebook Reels were always a problem. You couldn't turn them off, they were almost all NSFW or triggering in some way (because that's where the clicks are), and all you could do about it was scroll past them. Now they're the same, but they're nearly all AI-generated. And still no way to opt out.

Obviously they're not presenting a good faith argument about anything, but it's worth countering that historians do talk about the resistance, resilience, and dignity of enslaved people despite the dehumanizing, brutal circumstances. And you can't talk about that if you don't talk about slavery.

I knew Lee would rock his HIGH AND LOW remake. It's the best Kurosawa remake, but it's probably even better as a furtherance of what Lee has been working on for decades. I don't have time to dive deep, with a semester looming, but I have the sketch of a thought. www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

I know there was a guy saying that Disney stole MOANA from him, but honestly, it's underrated how much Disney stole from the 1926 Flaherty docudrama MOANA (in which Moana is male). Minus the mythological stuff, the order of events in that one is quite familiar. Happy 99th to that doc canon fixture!

Slightly diminish a band: Prince but he has a couple of older brothers so

the thing everyone is going to have to accept is that the post-trump period, whenever it comes, will not and cannot be a project of national unity, it must be a project of partisan project of renewal, in the same way that reconstruction and the new deal were partisan projects of renewal.

If an individual offering consensual nudes of themself on OnlyFans is considered “illicit” but a program generating nudes of women without their consent is fine, the powers that be have made their priorities clear. And they’re the same as they ever were.

VIZ Media quietly added an AI-translated manga to their app and hoped no one would notice. We did. Manga deserves better than cheap, soulless automation. This is a betrayal of translators, fans, and the art form. We don't want your AI translations!

@harryblankscp.bsky.social "...the Gigantomachy, a mythical battle pitting order against chaos..." - September must be near.

When you go to Cambodia (at least when I did 20 years ago), landmine victims missing limbs sell t-shirts with "Beware of Landmines" logos. At least that money, presumably, goes to the victims themselves. These grifters will never see the inside of the concentration camp they're kitsch-ifying.

When you're the butt of a joke in your field for 30 years and just can't help doubling down.

I don't think enough good things can be said about the people who worked hard to build the political pressure for his and everyone else's release, including senator van hollen. otoh there is no bottom to my contempt for the people who were urging the opposite course of action

Folks, please keep up the pressure on these damned companies. My work in trans sapphic scifi partially relies on using Itchio for distribution, so this is very much an existential threat to me. Thank you to everyone who's gotten us this far.

Monthly reminder: Many people have a book in them, but it takes a special kind of freak to leave the Land of Laziness, cross the Plains of Procrastination and Insecurity Mountain, find the Blade of No One Made You Do This, and use it to cut your chest open and yank that book out.

UK media has notoriously poor framing and word choice, but still, this is an accurate depiction of the mood around immigration. It's not only the US that's lost its mind. Rescuers are in a position of having to defend the saving of drowning people, including children. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...

Movie rec: THIRD PART OF THE NIGHT (1971) It concerns a Polish version of Oskar Schindler, but it's not about the guy in charge. It's also not New Wave indulgence (as good as that is) or neo-noir fantasy like Polanski might have done. It's an attempt to do literature on film, and it's intoxicating.

I sympathize with her mission here. But I think there are two major reasons why historians are more comfortable leaning into analysis rather than incitements to action that we have reason to believe might offer a "way out". One is job security, and the other is legal risk.

Just a brilliant, clever piece of software. I forgot to add "-AI" to the end of my search, so I get this. As a treat.

On day 8 of this month's sumo tournament, there was a guy nearly in the front row wearing a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine t-shirt. That is taste.

Movie rec: WINNEBAGO MAN (2010) leaves so much off-screen, but it's clear that that's a product of compromise between filmmaker and subject. I don't know if it's because I was around for the early internet or because I once attended a Found Footage Fest, but it's a cathartic, uplifting doc for me.

Rümeysa is one of the kindest, most compassionate people I have ever met. Many of you came to know her first and foremost as an ICE abductee, seized by a state that wanted to strip her of her humanity. I would like for you to know her in her own words, which are resoundingly human.

Without good questions, about 50% of college students use AI to write short answer history responses at the beginning of a semester. What they almost never do is traditional plagiarism, copying and pasting from a non-AI source. You can almost spin that as a win. It isn't, but you can almost pretend.

Movie rec: MACARIO (1960). A fiercely Marxist fairy tale, a New World SEVENTH SEAL, a funny tale of doom from the enigmatic immigrant who wrote SIERRA MADRE. Put it on this year's Halloween watchlist. youtu.be/2I5FC8KrJaQ?...

RANposting Day 30: But who's counting www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 29: Worth the drive to Himeji? www.facebook.com/100063672590...

RANposting Day 28: Poll trivia www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 27: Confessions www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

In other words, the job-getting value of a degree is minimal. There may be long-term divergences and job-type differences, but at the outset, when the loans start coming due, the feeling is that it did nothing. I designed a history syllabus recently and made sure to factor in job-use potential.

RANposting Day 26: Some people's Roman Empire is the Ottoman Empire www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 25: As a buddy road movie, RAN owes much to DERSU UZALA. www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 24: Like Christo and Jeanne-Claude plus spears www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 23: It's sincere. Unless you ask a different essayist! www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 22: A character type that appears with arguably annoying frequency www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 21: I'm not into modern kaiju movies, but I might give this one another try just for the weird RAN connection www.facebook.com/utdac/posts/...

RANposting Day 20: So someone should probably try that. www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 19: One of those actors you wish had had a better run www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 18 - Jinpachi Nezu had a weird 1985! www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 17: Earworm potential www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...

RANposting Day 16: When two RAN actors got to return to their characters in a contemporary setting www.facebook.com/DavidConradA...