Education about Asia does great work. The editor position comes with an annual stipend too.
Eike Exner@eikeexner.com · last mo.Greg de St. Maurice
@gdsm.bsky.social
Cultural anthropology • Food studies • Japanese studies • Craft, cuisine, place, branding, design
Eike Exner@eikeexner.com · last mo.Aarhus University gastronomy conference, Aarhus Denmark, 29 September to 1 October 2026. The deadline for proposals is 15 May so another week to go conferences.au.dk/gastro
Gastronomy in Transition
conferences.au.dk
Mid-morning after rain. The smell of wood and fallen leaves. A crow and a pigeon silently make appeals for the breadcrumbs a woman scatters for the ducks and carp.
The bus will return in 90 minutes. I have that much time to watch the sky’s colors intensify and darken, the stars appear, and the nearby lighthouse’s beam sweep through the dark landscape. I can hear insects and the waves on both sides.
As much as people talk about native and foreign or imported and domestic, I love those Japanese sweets that totally draw on European culinary culture. Chocolate manju, milk manju, I appreciate you.
It's really saddening the extent to which xenophobic anti-foreigner-blaming rhetoric has completely taken over the Japanese election, in many ways distracting from much more significant issues affecting Japanese society. japanesemodernity.substack.com/p/xenophobic...
Xenophobic Rhetoric in the 2025 House of Councillors Campaigns
In the lead-up to the July 2025 House of Councillors election, nearly all parties—especially right-leaning ones—devoted significant attention to proposals on foreign residents (Asahi Shimbun 2025a).
japanesemodernity.substack.com
Unconscionable. I hope this gets remedied soon. Thankfully, there are NGOs doing admirable work to prevent human trafficking, rescue victims, and bring perpetrators to justice.
Trump cuts 69 global programs tackling child labor and human trafficking
More than $500m in grants axed as US risks decades of progress in protecting vulnerable workers worldwide
theguardian.com
The other day, I was telling friends and family how a housewife originated these Tokyo Metro transfer and exit guides, and they thought I was kidding. It used to be a well-known story. If you don't know it, here's a quick summary.
“We might also be heading toward something like Posting Zero, a point at which normal people—the unprofessionalized, uncommodified, unrefined masses—stop sharing things on social media as they tire of the noise, the friction, and the exposure.” Social media minus the social?
Are You Experiencing Posting Ennui?
Sharing casual moments from our lives on social media doesn’t seem to make sense the way it used to.
newyorker.com
“A lot of my peers understand that nothing is guaranteed really, no matter what you study, so you should just study the thing that matters the most to you,” Balh said. “AI doesn't feel like a reason to stop making art. If anything, it’s a reason to keep making and insist on making art.”
NYC art schools see record-high application numbers as Gen Zers clamber to enroll
Yes, even in this economy.
gothamist.com
The Maintainers have released their “Maintainers Study Guide: A Guide to Ground Your Practice in Principles of Maintenance, Repair + Care” — a resource that “reflects nearly a decade of work” across The Maintainers’ conferences, fellowships, research networks, etc themaintainers.org/study-guide/
The age of the AI scraping free-for-all may be coming to an end—at least if Cloudflare gets its way. The IT infrastructure firm has switched to blocking AI crawlers by default for its customers and is moving forward with a Pay Per Crawl program.
Cloudflare Is Blocking AI Crawlers by Default
The age of the AI scraping free-for-all may be coming to an end. At least if Cloudflare gets its way.
wrd.cm
My statement on Donald Trump's threat to deport me and his praise for Eric Adams, who the President "helped out" of legal accountability.
Aaron Rupar@atrupar.com · last yr.Trump threatens to arrest Mamdani and then adds, "a lot of people are saying he's here illegally"
In 1987, on the eve of the release of Studio Ghibli's Grave of the Fireflies, director Takahata Isao sat down for an interview with Nosaka Akiyuki, the author who penned the semi-autobiographical novel on which the film is based. A few highlights from their totally fascinating discussion:
"The Mamdani campaign’s identity is the work of a tiny design co-op called Forge, and specifically its designer Aneesh Bhoopathy, formerly of Queens and now living in Philadelphia" — a little bit Bollywood, a little bit bodega :)
New York Magazine@nymag.com · last yr.Zohran Mamdani’s campaign had a visual language like no other, drawing on hand-painted bodega signage and New York iconography in a completely fresh way.
The number of drinks vending machines in Japan fell from 2.47 mln in 2014 to 2.04mln in 2024, and 10% are still unprofitable. When a 500ml bottle of Coke goes to 200 yen, some 20-30% may become unprofitable. toyokeizai.net/articles/-/8...
【限界の自販機】｢コカ･コーラ｣200円時代突入へ､今秋値上げで赤字自販機は2～3割に激増も。サントリーやダイドーも苦戦で、連携の動きは加速か
6月中旬、都内の気温が30度を超えた真夏日。汗だくになりながら道端を歩いていると、コカ・コーラの自動販売機が目にとまった。飲み物を買おうと近づくと、ミネラルウォーター「いろはす」（540ミリリットル）が14…
toyokeizai.net
Agricultural tariff schedule. There’s so much here. And yet, I’m left with so many questions.
trade.gov
I saw this woman feeding stray dogs in Patan, Nepal. They knew who she was and all but one went over to her immediately. Seeing so many strays was sad, but they clearly weren’t afraid of people. I saw some in stores, hanging out. At night, some of them were sleeping in the middle of the street.
W. David Marx compares AI generated art to polyester. From an aesthetic perspective, it’s already losing value just like the artificial fabric did. culture.ghost.io/genai-is-our...
GenAI is Our Polyester
The best way to understand generative AI art and aesthetics is to consider how previous "synthetics" lost value in the long-run For the first half of the 20th century, white-collar workers wore busin...
culture.ghost.io
Nepal has been one discovery after another. This one is chhang: a fermented rice beverage low in alcohol. The taste varies from family to family. This one has a lactic acid flavor with vegetal and herbal notes.
Me: Carpets are dust and stain magnets and unhygienic. Dislike! Also me: There’s such a thing as a Yeti rocking chair?!? Want!
Absurdly proud of the first garlic bulb I’ve grown. It’s so small because I had to harvest it early after spotting the allium leaf miner infestation on my balcony.
