@mtoole.bsky.social
Assistant Professor of Japanese Studies. He/Him. All Views/Likes are my own.
Stopped by the campus bookstore to look for an A4 picture frame. Left with four used books, each priced at 99 cents. I have no regrets.📖
10.07.2025 20:31 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I don’t think anyone is prepared for what they just did w/ ICE.
This is not a simple budget increase. It is an explosion - making ICE bigger than the FBI, US Bureau of Prisons, DEA,& others combined.
It is setting up to make what’s happening now look like child’s play. And people are disappearing.
Flyer with discount code DELPA30 for 30% off when you order my book "Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan."
My 2023 book is coming out in paperback in Sept. Use discount code DELPA30 for 30% off when you order from the publisher's website. Title: Language Ideologies and L2 Speaker Legitimacy: Native Speaker Bias in Japan. Here's the flyer.
#AppliedLinguistics #Japanese #L2 #sociolinguistics #SLA
the regressiveness of the Trump's big bill, in one image
16.06.2025 12:33 — 👍 1897 🔁 754 💬 49 📌 40The head of the department of homeland security announced that she planned to use military force to take over a democratically elected government in the state of California and we are arguing about whether a California Senator properly identified himself at the door.
13.06.2025 12:32 — 👍 7257 🔁 2337 💬 100 📌 86
Join those of us marching in the "No Kings" Protest tomorrow! Find out where your closest march is↓https://www.nokings.org/?SQF_SOURCE=50501
13.06.2025 14:43 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0Plaskett to Bessent: "Excuse me. Let me get something straight with you. I've seen you interrupt everyone. When you come to someone's house, you respect their rules. And in this house, we don't interrupt individuals. And you're not going to interrupt my time."
11.06.2025 18:36 — 👍 6522 🔁 1407 💬 270 📌 153
Rep. Eric. Sorensen on Harvey Milk: "He stood up for the same people who are being targeted, persecuted, and vilified by this administration today ... picking and choosing who deserves that thanks -- it's not just wrong, it's un-American."
11.06.2025 18:54 — 👍 4243 🔁 1122 💬 52 📌 30I am so excited to see "The Blob"! I grew up close to The Colonial, where they filmed this masterpiece. Every few years they had a "save the Colonial"-type of event.
05.06.2025 19:02 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Wouldn't it be nice if those in the US government who displayed apathy for voters were shamed into resigning? Of course, Etō's resignation has had no material effect on the price of rice. unseen-japan.com/japan-agricu...
28.05.2025 16:50 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Rep. Laurel Libby, R-Auburn, recently used my second-place finish in the 1,600-meter run, and that of my teammate in the 800-meter run, to malign Soren Stark-Chessa, the trans-identified athlete who finished first. One of the reasons I chose to run cross-country and track is the community: Teammates cheering each other on, athletes from different schools coming together, and the fact that personal improvement is valued as much as, if not more than, the place we finish. Last Friday, I ran the fastest 1,600-meter race I have ever run in middle school or high school track and earned varsity status by my school’s standards. I am extremely proud of the effort I put into the race and the time that I achieved. The fact that someone else finished in front of me didn’t diminish the happiness I felt after finishing that race. I don’t feel like first place was taken from me. Instead, I feel like a happy day was turned ugly by a bully who is using children to make political points. We are all just kids trying to make our way through high school. Participating in sports is the highlight of high school for some kids. No one was harmed by Soren’s participation in the girls’ track meet, but we are all harmed by the hateful rhetoric of bullies, like Rep. Libby, who want to take sports away from some kids just because of who they are. Anelise Feldman Freshman, Yarmouth High School Yarmouth
this is a letter to the editor from a high school track runner who came in second to a trans girl in a race. her state house rep in maine started talking about it. so she wrote this: www.pressherald.com/2025/05/14/r...
16.05.2025 03:25 — 👍 31733 🔁 10024 💬 360 📌 1014Ghoulish. She won't even agree to help a worried mother know whether her son is even alive.
Andry has been imprisoned without trial for 60 days, held incommunicado by the Salvadoran government as part of a deal where we handed Bukele a metaphorical briefcase of cash to detain hundreds of people!
Oh no! Goo is stopping its online dictionary service on June 25.
help.goo.ne.jp/help/article...
A fake version of the Disability Studies Reader 6th edition has been put up on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. The 6th edition was never published. Routledge is working to get the listing taken down. Please do not order it because this is a scam. All the previous editions 1st through 5th are genuine.
12.05.2025 20:20 — 👍 145 🔁 66 💬 4 📌 6
I have many thoughts on the new Pope, Leo XIV. As a former Catholic School boy, I was quite touched by his call for bishops (and popes I assume?!) to not "be a little prince sitting in his kingdom." He also graduated from Villanova, minutes from my hometown.
09.05.2025 15:40 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
New #Japanese 流行語 explanations are out! Click the link below to learn about:
海外ニキネキ
違和感仕事しろ
ちくわ大明神
5000兆円欲しい!
あくしろよ
切り替えピース
風呂キャンセル界隈
メンブレ
リアコ
恋のHamburg♪/お料理、得意なんです
wesleycrobertson.wordpress.com/2025/04/30/j...
We hadn’t won World War II by May 8th. I know because my family and I were still in an internment camp in Tule Lake, California.
03.05.2025 22:22 — 👍 31420 🔁 6458 💬 2211 📌 477Fellow authors, I love you, and I know it feels like we don’t have a choice, but B&N and Am*zon both scheduled sales this week to preempt Independent Bookstore Day, a hugely vital source of income for indie bookstores. Please don’t promote their sales; please promote your local indie this week.
23.04.2025 23:52 — 👍 5209 🔁 2216 💬 61 📌 125
TransgenderJapan (TGJP) has released a statement protesting the UK Supreme Court ruling made last week and extending solidarity to all trans people in the UK.
21.04.2025 11:18 — 👍 61 🔁 20 💬 1 📌 1
In defiance of the Supreme Court & without any evidence, the White House claims that Kilmar Abrego Garcia is a “terrorist,” who was “sent to the right place.”
This is a blatant LIE. He is innocent.
He cannot be allowed to rot in an El Salvadorian jail. He must be brought home.
Can we get more of this? “The Japanese American National Museum will ‘scrub nothing,’ Fujioka said, and instead will highlight the importance of DEI.
“Our community is based on diversity, equity is guaranteed to us in the Constitution, and inclusion is what we believe in,” Fujioka said.
🚨UPDATE: Rümeysa Öztürk has now suffered three separate asthma attacks while in DHS custody.
She has not received her required asthma medications—a violation of her fundamental right to medical care.
This is cruelty, it is neglect, and it is a damning moral and legal failure.
Yet another example of the lesser-ranked schools taking the stand that the bigger schools are too scared to.
Here: even as Ann Arbor caves on DEI, Eastern Michigan does not.
The courage of the smaller schools is laudable. The refusal of the bigger schools is frustrating.
The Okinawa Prefectural gov't maintains an office in Washington DC that allows Okinawans' voices to be heard, and their issues understood, more directly than leaving it up to the Embassy of Japan to speak for them.
Petition against the closure of that office:
www.change.org/p/%E6%B2%96%...
A trailer has been revealed for the upcoming film 『ブルーボーイ事件』, which is based on the case that rendered SRS legally and medically taboo in Japan from the late 1960s to the late 1990s.
The film is directed by Kashou Iizuka and its leading actress is Miyu Nakagawa, both of whom are trans themselves.
Thanks for introducing Asai Emuko. I will follow your sage advice and make her essay a reading for an upper-level Japanese class!
10.03.2025 19:12 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0One thing we've learned since 1/20 with painful clarity is that our institutions are far more fragile than we could have ever imagined.
03.02.2025 19:23 — 👍 3334 🔁 298 💬 61 📌 22
Ikea Bunka sticker event poster created by Nai Inc.
Held inside a long-running folding fan shop in Kyoto, the "Ikezu Bunka" event challenged people to take a crack at reading the true intentions behind the shop proprietress's veiled language. One group said they got kicked out in a minute and 20 seconds.
https://buff.ly/3WDXVgp
ICYMI: Japan’s conservative-leaning government continues to drag its feet on passing marriage equality despite broad public support. However, the government announced that same-sex couples were covered by 24 laws usually reserved for legally recognized marriages.
https://buff.ly/4hb3ivB
