stella

beautiful ethnographic thick description of seasonality, huge inspiration, what I aspire to achieve in my thesis. 10/10 no notes

Interviews, interviews, all the interviews. Two today, one on Monday, one last Saturday. They were good but man are they tiring! #anthrosky #PhDsky

It turns out these are Kanhi-zakura, which is why they bloomed a good few weeks before the rest of the Kawazu-zakura. It's hard to keep up with all the varieties!

The powers that be at JR East have changed all the Yamanote Line departure melodies to the same song. I'm officially declaring a week of mourning for one of the true simple joys of being a Tokyo resident :(

Strange day today. I had to press the emergency button at a level crossing this morning (an obaasan fell out her wheelchair). Equal parts intriguing and terrifying, thankfully everyone was fine.

Also Sam Fender released a new album, which gets a big thumbs up from me. TV Dinner is a great track

Maybe human cities vs windshield cities. It doesn't trap the future without cars into something too narrow

Number 1 - I like how it gets at viscerally experiencing vs viewing through glass - but f2f needs to change. Other words... in person, real life, presence... being vs seeing, participating vs observing... but I like 'windshield cities' a lot! Does it have to be a dichotomy?

White plum blossoms, against a Shinto shrine (a wooden building with gold accents), against a cold and clear blue sky

This week I've been spending time out in the cold with the plum blossoms. I also scheduled in some interviews which I'm excited about!

A Shinto shrine with cherry blossoms and a pine tree. People are lining up to pray at the shrine and gazing up at the blossoms

Pink fluffy blossoms against a blue sky

Blossom trees above a path by a river. People are taking photos and enjoying the blooms, including a man with a very long lens for taking bird photos

Pink blossoms and a little green bird

Kawazu-zakura yesterday 🌸 Ebara Shrine, Shinagawa

Viscerally experienced the seasons today, with the cold blast Japan is experiencing giving my poor hands some very chapped skin 🥶 something something embodiment

A ramen shop in Shibuya at night. The light is warm and red neon. A couple of people, one in a flashy fringed white skirt, walk in front of the shop.

Various bits and bobs outside a restaurant. The vibe is concrete and beer crates and bare lightbulbs.

A decorative lantern swings behind a wooden sign showing a restaurant menu. Everything is cast in a slightly purple glow from a nearby advertisement board.

A cardboard sign in a restaurant window says 'there is Curry's (in Japanese). Around the window the wall is spray painted and covered in stickers.

Successful day today - discovered a nice local library (and got a library card!), went climbing, and joined a photo walk to get some cool edgy photos of Shibuya at night. Time for bed!

Yeah, this actually made me worry a bit because what if the servers go down, it's hard to have a local copy 😅 definitely use what works best for your situation!

I can't lie I'm really disappointed and angry that Starmer is just rolling over and acquiescing to the fascists in the US. They go against everything Labour stands for and you're happy to just sit there, offering only weak words? And just nothingness towards the rise of the far right in the UK. Ugh.

Re: this, seems it was done to make this report by Ted Cruz's office singling out 'woke' grants. Of ~32,000 grants, ~29,000 contain at least one of these words, they had to narrow it down further using some... sus methodology

Chilling

#AcademicSky #PhDSky

www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...

Dorothy Porter in 1939, at her desk in the Carnegie Library at Howard University. Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Manuscript Division, Howard University

Dorothy B. Porter changed libraries 💜

The Dewey Decimal System used to only have two classifications for Black people: 325 (colonization) & 326 (slavery). Each book by a Black person was put into one of these classifications. A book of poetry? Classified as colonization.

Enter Dorothy B. Porter 🧵

Time for us all to use as many of these words as possible to gum up the censorship tree

Either that or by omitting these words they delete the whole of anthropology, I guess, since we can't use the word 'sociocultural' or 'multicultural' or 'cultural differences' or 'women' or, or....

At what point do we start a BDS campaign against the US? I'm serious.

If you aren't motivated by hope, that's fine. Other people are, though, so don't bring them down to your level.

Keep your fatalistic nihilism to yourself, because we can't afford to discourage action at a time like this.

The UK is safe from a right wing government for the next 5 years. Funding is a bit of a struggle though

Google search > Ecosia (it also plants trees with the ad revenue)
Kindle > Kobo (which you can load library books onto)
Chrome > Firefox (one of the few non Chromium browsers, open source, generally defenders of the free internet)

Sam Eagle as Miley Cyrus on the cover of vanity fair.

i’m just photoshopping muppets onto the cover of vanity fair: thread

I really appreciate this piece, the call to *action* in our own ways (not just naming what's bad) and making the left a welcoming warm space are standout points for me. Also an international perspective, finally. Thanks for writing!

Thank you for sharing this, I found it really illuminating and I'm glad to see something taking a perspective beyond the current events in the US

I kinda wish this platform was less American-centric. I know it must be rough being in the US right now. But struggling to see how being here is useful, as someone with zero personal ties to the US, as everything I'm getting is about the current US situation + nothing else. Any tips?

Found this today and it made me smile. The indieweb lives! www.cameronsworld.net

First interview of the PhD is done ✅ 🎉

Many many more to go but it was good to get started!

#PhDSky

Also anthropology - specifically MRes Social Anthropology (so it was about research methods)

Ironic that this is behind a paywall, but good news for those of us funded by UKRI... now raise stipends for everybody!

Ah, I'm sorry - ignore me then. I hope you manage to find some respite within the chaos at some point ❤️

Probably has a lot to do with the very mild January we've had here, lots of days have been March-like weather according to the news