Nina Horisaki-Christens

And for clarity, we do have guest slippers and guest booties. Shoes in booties are allowed in the studio area, but not upstairs.

Michigan and absolutely.
We had a shoes-off household when I was a kid, and now my partner is Japanese, so shoes stop at the door.

Ick. This is so exploitative. Can you imagine your family trying to use AI to project what the AI thinks you might say were you still alive? AI is not trained to be an individual, but rather to be believable . It's not going to say what you would, but rather what everyone living would expect of you.

I find it telling that my dad, who has worked on the management side of corporate union negotiations, was shocked and insulted by the caustically hostile tone of lawyers representing a different university employer of mine during a remote contract negotiation session.

And I wish this were only a problem of Columbia University's administration, but it seems to be endemic to academic administrations across the country, a situation that is plain to see if you follow student worker and faculty union negotiations.

Stop the Cuts! Save Grad Student Core Preceptor Jobs Recently, we learned that the Columbia University administration is planning to drastically reduce – or even eliminate – teaching positions for graduate students in the Core Curriculum. The univers...

The CU administration doesn't value students—graduate or undergraduate—so they treat them as expendable and refuse to protect them from a political administration hell-bent on silencing the next generation of thinkers who might dare to challenge the status quo.

actionnetwork.org/letters/prot...

Honestly, I can't help but read the ongoing hostile stance of the university toward student workers—their refusal to bargain in good faith since the Obama era, and their apparent current intention to cut most grad student preceptorships—as directly related to their acquiescence to GOP bullying.

How about we just make the situation at the gates like the lounges (free snacks, shower access, comfortable seating) ?????

Like, I don't see the point of the lounges for flights in and out of Haneda, Narita, Hong Kong, and Doha because the airports themselves are largely pleasant experiences.

Hmmm...must've just blocked it from memory then.

Or maybe it felt to expensive as a college student.

I stood there, uncertain what to do, but in my head I all I could think was "Dude, I didn't ask you anything about being Muslim OR your thoughts on Americans, so it feels really unsettling for you to bring it up."

...But my memory probably also has the Lawsons burned into it because I wore an OSU SPEAC t-shirt in there once and a guy asked if OSU was in Ohio and if that meant I was American. He then proceeded to say, "Ah, I'm Muslim, but not that kind of Muslim. I'm Moroccan, so nothing against Americans!"

I was trying to remember, but I've been back just enough times to not be able to remember how it was at the time. You say 2002...early or late? 'cause I left mid-way through 2002...

Your note about Starbucks makes me think there may not have been a Starbucks there when I studied abroad. I remember going to the Lawsons closest to Sanjo Ohashi to get chu-hai or milk tea pretty regularly which I feel like I would not have felt the need to do if there was a coffee place nearby.

I had not heard it from my friends in Thailand or Cambodia, either....but that might explain the cryptic "Peace is a choice" post one of them made a few hours ago...

I want to scream into the void every time I hear any announcements or analysis from any current or former "President" of "Columbia University."

Obviously. Put it this way: a year ago the dept I graduated from—notoriously unable to agree on anything because of size and factionalism—put a banner on its homepage criticizing the uni for shutting down student demos and bringing NYPD on campus. If calling the NYPD got them up in arms...

The only thing I will ever remember Hulk Hogan for is the claim by a particular longtime waiter in a no-longer-existant restaurant in my hometown that Hulk Hogan was a fan of cheddar cheese soup.

...with the lone exception of free discussion for remote classes, where the point of student writing is consistent participation rather than getting all the answers right.

Inevitably, when I do try out these "magic graders" they do a terrible job of grading, giving pretty similar answers radically different grades, and I have to grade everything by hand in the end. So no, I do not anticipate using a discussion-post summarizer or automated grading tool...

They are not flexible enough, they expect you to design your assignments to fit their capacity rather that facilitating the needs of your learning assessments, and yes, I've worked with LMS designers and teaching consultants, and they are telling me the software can't do what I need it to do.

AAAAARRRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!!!!!!
Sorry, not a single piece of grading assistant software has ever worked properly for me. And I don't mean I don't know how to use it, but rather that the ways I want to grade and the kinds of activities I expect of my students are not what the software accounts for.

Tatsuno Toeko, The Painted Image | Art Platform Japan (APJ) Tatsuno Toeko, The Painted Image

Summer News II:

My latest translation for Art Platform Japan is now online!
A 1980s mid-career interview with painter Tatsuno Toeko!

artplatform.go.jp/readings/R20...

Summer News I:

Technically spring news, but my "Between Galapagos and Archipelagos: Institutional Tensions in Japanese Contemporary Art," came out in "Verge: Studies in Global Asias" in March!

dx.doi.org/10.1353/vrg.....

Truly cannot with these "my ancestors did it the right way" people. I have one ancestor who came through Ellis Island, but who the hell knows about the rest. One of them fled from a famine and refused to ever talk about how he got here, and another was among the pre-US colonizers, so what is legal?!

Mine asks for the rabbit cut slices.

Yeah, during the pandemic it was already pretty clear how much he doesn't care about the five boroughs. Otherwise, there would have been no justification he could have given himself for getting into that toddler-level spat he had with de Blasio.

Ah yes, famously, the rest of your body's health is unrelated to how you take care of it.

What the hell Cuomo. I already knew he was a jerk, but does he think people don't own because they don't want to? Does he understand how absolutely insane property prices AND maintenance fees are in New York City? Clearly not if he thinks you have to own to be committed to the community.

Every class I teach, I ask students what they get out of it. The answers I've received include "learning to observe and describe more accurately so I can be a better nurse," "learning how unequal access to certain archives shapes histories," and "understanding how to make a compelling case."

Yeah, I think the romance of revolution has unfortunately overshadowed the reality of frivolous decline in the public imagination. It probably looks like this more than we'd like to admit.