"don't make enough money" is a fig leaf All those degree programs--social work, art, etc.--have disproportionately female student bodies. This is designed to make it harder for women to attend college--college education being a key factor in women's autonomy from men & left-leaning voting pattern.

The New Republic@newrepublic.com · 2d ago

President Trump is banning students majoring in degrees that don’t make enough money from taking out college loans. Degrees for social work, art, religious studies, teaching aides, and music will be hit the hardest. trib.al/aaAEu6v

You don't see these so often anymore but the retro Showa era displays always get me. This one even comes with a menu. Tokyo

Early morning arcade shortcut between busy streets. Kyoto

Everything's an app but the app for the drink machine will get you 3 free drinks. Otherwise it will run you about a dollar a pop.

Fusion soba with parmesan grated on noodles, broth and raw egg, with a bit of olive oil and seaweed, ground pepper. Soba tea, cold. A financier. Soba water for drinking after pouring in leftover broth. There's a painted tiger because the owner likes tigers and often wore tiger-themed jackets. Kyoto

Posting some everyday food photos from walking around and watching tv. A "morning show" with a raste test of 20 kinds of frozen cool Chinese noodles. It's so hot! Here the chefs are comparing all kinds of measurements w an eye to which size & design makes for the best vehicle for sesame sauce. Yum!

This is going to make it very difficult to know which sports we should ban them from.

Kat Kerlin@katkerlin.bsky.social · last wk.

Some avocados are female in the morning and male in the afternoon, while others are on the opposite schedule. This helps them avoid self-pollination. How do they do it? A @ucdavis.bsky.social study explains. www.ucdavis.edu/food/news/st...

USA Today is brutal. RFK blabs about not being a good cook, and we get a bonus of henpecked husband jokes. His menu has 2 items and sounds gross. The article calls his 2 guests celebrity chefs without saying what they are chefs...of. The microwave? Children's lunches? Inquiring minds wanna know.

Chris Kluwe@chriswarcraft.bsky.social · 6d ago

Why am I not surprised to see our HB city councilor Andrew Gruel in this. Sure man, why would you want to worry about stuff like “balancing our budget” or “figuring out how to build new housing” or “explaining how much you’ve wasted on legal fees” when you can go hang out with Measles McRoadkill.

I love that there are train stops in Tokyo named after very specific logistical functions. Just leaving Distribution center (circulation might be better but worse in English and I like the feel of busses distributing people). You can see a fleet of airport busses in the background here, in orange.

It also brims with Brian Bergstrom's really awesome translation!

Publishers Weekly@publisherswkly.bsky.social · last wk.

★ Political theorist Kohei Saito argues in this penetrating treatise that Karl Marx’s Capital has never been more relevant than in the era of global warming. This brims with power and urgency. @AstraHouseBooks buff.ly/yEFFzwi

Joke‘s on me because MOOCs failed at being remembered and but MOOC politics absolutely won the university.

Just catching up on news. A 7 earthquake in Kumamoto, on kyushu in the south. Earthquakes are measured exponentially in Japan, so 7 is considerably stronger than 6. Kumamoto also had flooding and is slated to be hotter than body temperature tomorrow...here a reporter from nhk surveys damage.

A 61-year old Kyoto resident has been arrested for playing excessively loud music. Neighbors had been complaining for 7 years. Police finally moved and confiscated over 50 guitars and amps. www.sankei.com/article/2026...

Hilarious, ingenious, and a sad indictment of the state of US federal research funding

David Ho@davidho.bsky.social · 2w ago

Facing federal science budget cuts, biologist Daniel Blumstein resorted to uploading marmot videos to OnlyFans to raise funds for his marmot research. However, when he uploaded his driver’s license for verification, OnlyFans informed him that his appearance didn’t match the marmots in the videos.

on the Odyssey thing, I feel like any "old world' literature has a pretty robust array of anachronisms. Here are a few of my faves from Japanese film, lit, anime. Here, a film about an underperforming Roman architect getting sucked via a bath into a contemporary Japanese bathhouse...very hilarious.

THERMAE ROMAE - Trailer | JFF Theater

YouTube video by JFF Theater | Moved, Touched & Inspired

youtube.com

do people know what they are asking, when they ask me to round up some "Asian students" to read their novels? our students are 47% food insecure, they are working; why should they do this for free? it's the ed-tech mind virus of capturing young humans as a source of capital to spin into private $.

NPR, you don't have to do this. You've already been de-funded. Have some self-respect...

Jesse Eisinger@jeisinger.bsky.social · 2w ago

Ridiculous insistence on not understanding who the president is

what if they zoomed in on the Sirens and it was Haim

Lol, META repping itself as a Bowie fan by cribbing from "the Bowiebible" website (itself cribbed from an NME article, apparently). Totally convincing and consensual that these spokes-people totally understand context clues of apocalypse and have actually listened to the song. Sorry, wrong number.

Meta’s New Feel-Good AI Ad Uses a Song About the World Ending

The clip features the David Bowie track “Five Years,” which includes lyrics such as “Earth was really dying (dying).”

wired.com

business salutations are so thorny. I used to love writing "Cordiallement"/Cordially in French, as it clearly exresses distant goodwill. Nothing in English comes close--Best, Regards, Best regards, (Nothing at all). I'm tempted to write Sincerely, but that seems too actually sincere and personal. ??

looks like the judge chopped the Anthropic legal fees to 7%. I do disagree w her read that opting in signals a belief that $3K is "fair." I think it's more about getting something rather than the piddly nothing you'd get as an individual dot. Also, AI "training" *IS* piracy; it's a dumb distinction.

Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement approved; only 350 authors opted out

Anthropic blocks authors from opting out of $1.5B settlement at last minute.

arstechnica.com

Hurray for student journalists!

WIRED@wired.com · 2w ago

An Instagram post about Jeffrey Epstein’s ties to wealthy communities in Marin County, CA, turned one California student newspaper into a free-speech flash point. The students say they were just doing their homework.

Unfortunate that I have to go on Twitter to read female Japanese cabinet ministers confessing they are so terrible at ironing they keep burning their hands. Meet the deputy foreign minister...I am begging you to get some home ec game or for god's sake pay someone with skills. x.com/ayano_kunimi...

国光あやの 外務副大臣 衆議院議員 Ayano KUNIMITSU (@ayano_kunimitsu) on X

分かります！涙。国光も下手なアイロンかけで何度手🖐️を焦がしたか。。 人の手を借りるのもありますが、家族に負担かけていますし、家族が人を入れるのを嫌がる場合もありますし、ついつい「それくらいはやらないと」となりがちですよね😌

x.com

yes, voice, voice, VOICE, the translator's friend! so tired of reading new translations, especially genre fiction or works that are obsessively inner, that should swing, but where I, a word-nerd from way back, stub my toes and remember ancient 1980s SAT words of my youth--Dostoevsky in this piece.

The Translator’s Voice — Michael Katz on Translating Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Idiot” - Chicago Review of Books

An interview with Michael Katz about his translation of Fyodor Dostoevsky's "The Idiot."

chireviewofbooks.com

a fascinating meditation on gender and personal space (and world historical politics) that might have to be in my new book. Very fascinated by Takaichi's home ec skills. Sort of reminds me of Murakami's story "Sleep." They do have dry cleaners in Tokyo, so ironing one's own clothes is def a choice!

Japan Is Startled by Prime Minister’s Grueling Sleep Schedule

Sanae Takaichi has said she gets just “zero to three hours” of sleep a night, prompting a debate in the country over work-life balance.

nytimes.com

Holy cow. Domestic science is going out the window too...too much to quote but RIP Instant Pot and long lived buy-em-once legacy kitchen products.

@laperry2.bsky.social · 2w ago

www.worseonpurpose.com/p/your-cookw...

Friend: Anthropic settlement has been approved. Amount per work = $3,127.28 Nnedi: I had 11 works in the settlement. I filled out their stupid forms, sure. But I don't want their damn money. I want them to go back in time and not have used my work to train their AI.

At laaaaast!!!

Greg Pak@gregpak.net · 2w ago

Gimme my money.

Pool report from @svdate.bsky.social, who is at the World Cup ceremony: "The president walked onto the field at 1826 to a sustained chorus of boos. Ambient crowd noise was about 78 decibels. Booing brought it to 84."

First time in recorded history that a man has been simultaneously arrested by the cops and the fashion police

blippy@blippy.bsky.social · 3w ago

those pants are insane wtf