Brian Ruh

I just saw that our regional ISP is now “part of the T-Mobile Fiber family at T-Mobile”.

I don’t know what exactly this will mean, but I don’t like it.

So apparently, it may turn out that The Wizard of Oz at the Las Vegas Sphere wasn’t entirely made in AI and Google threw the VFX crew under the bus by claiming it was all done by artificial intelligence.

If true, then fucking yikes.

We have an internal LLM at work, but other than that the last time I consciously used any “AI” was years ago when the images it generated were weird smeary things.

It’s one thing to know Gemini is capable of more complex tasks. It’s another to know how to slot that into your life. Which is why I asked the team behind Gemini on the wrist to give me pointers. “It’s really easy to use Gemini as your second brain to offload whatever you need to remember,” says Jean Lee, senior product manager on Gemini. “The beauty is it has context. It can access your chat history, but it also knows what you’ve told Gemini about yourself in the past.” At that moment, Lee spoke into her wrist and asked Gemini what she should pack for the day. After a few seconds, it spat out that there would be scattered thunderstorms, a high of 97 degrees Fahrenheit with a real feel of 104 degrees, so Lee ought to pack pilates gear for a class later that day, a small packable umbrella, breathable and comfy clothing and shoes, and to avoid leather or suede materials.

“Second brain,” “super powers,” —they are really trying to convince everyone that this is augmentation not abdication.

Maison Ikkoku volume 1 cover - a woman stands in the foreground wearing a striped shirt and a yellow apron that says “piyo piyo” on it. A large boarding house stands in the background.

The first volume of Maison Ikkoku by Rumiko Takahashi. I love the series so much. I should reread it again soon.

One of the classic pieces of Maison Ikkoku artwork that used to float around the early days of the internet.

1. Central Indiana
2. Nah. They can if they want, but they certainly don’t have to.

NY high school grad detained by ICE released Editor’s note: The video aired before it was announced that Yeonsoo Go would be released. NEW YORK (PIX11) — Yeonsoo Go, the Scarsdale High School honors graduate who was detained by IC…

Update: she’s been released. pix11.com/news/local-n...

Excellent, thanks! I just had to know who would wear that shirt in their author photo.

Purdue student detained by ICE and taken to troubled Louisiana holding facility Yeonsoo Go, 20, was detained after her immigration hearing in Manhattan and taken away by ICE agents.

Go, a college student, has a dependent visa (her mother, an Episcopal minister, is here on a religious worker visa), which doesn't expire until Dec. But when she tried to renew it early, ICE nabbed her and sent her halfway across the US to a detention center.
www.wthr.com/article/news...

Just curious - who is that on the bottom row wearing the yellow Descendents shirt?

31 Short Stories for Women in Translation Month I had so much fun reading along with RJL supporters for January in Japan, that I hope you’ll join me again for #WomeninTranslation Month. #WITMonth an annual event each August that has played its o…

Hope some of y'all will read along with me for #WITMonth!

I've got stories queued up by some of Japan's best-known women writers (+ some you've likely never heard of), translated by some of my favorites—Balistrieri, Bergstrom, H Kawai, M Powell, Nieda, Takemori, Wilson, Yoneda...

Starts Friday!

Cover of かくれてるのだれ？ Featuring an egg character, a chick character, and some bunny ears peeking up.

I don’t know how this copy of かくれてるのだれ？ended up on my bookshelf. I used to read it to the kids when they were really small. (Well, we’d go through the pages. The only word in the book is だれ.)

Death by Landscape: Masao Adachi’s ‘A.K.A. Serial Killer’ On October 8, 1968, a .22 caliber Rohm RG-10 handgun––colloquially known as a “Roscoe”––was stolen from a U.S. Naval Base in Yokosuka. Over the course of the next month, four shootings took place in T...

Death by Landscape: Masao Adachi’s AKA Serial Killer. Alexander Mooney describes the film as a "hauntological landscape documentary" [and] "spectral travelogue [that] doubles as a psycho-geographical map of a nation in transition". www.documentary.org/feature/deat...

Political graffiti on a post box in a quiet corner of Setagaya, Tokyo. Whatever your stance on the situation in Gaza, that’s a neat way to integrate the Japanese postal mark.

Strange New World combines the worst of Star Trek with the worst of meme-fanfic with the worst of Whedon. Reading this prior sentence is explanation enough. I have no reason to expound further.

Also reviews! I just saw the one for "Archaism and Actuality: Japan and the Global Fascist Imaginary". Any new Harootunian work is worth noting, and this one seems particularly relevant.

New issue of the Journal of Japanese Studies is out! Highlights include articles on kanpu masatsu, war photography, empire paranoia, Italian-Japanese children's lit, Seidensticker’s style, and a bonus piece on Black Rain and ritual. Don’t miss it!

I do enjoy Okinawan music, but I didn’t get much of a chance to explore that aspect when I was there.

For a while I thought of writing my dissertation on US military broadcast media (tv and radio) in Okinawa. I still think that would have been really interesting. But I took a different path.

Ah, that's one of those films that has been on my "to watch" list since it came out

None at all. I went there once in 2001 on a study trip and it was pretty influential on me. I've been meaning to get back but, you know, life.

I finally got around to watching the first episode of this. Actually, much better than I thought it would be. I'll keep watching.

There was a piano bit about 8min in that sounded like it was riffing on The Boom's "Shima Uta". And I enjoyed the "Shimanchu nu Takara" ED, though the original is better

The paperback is over half off at the bad book site, and I'd gotten a gift card for my birthday for there anyway, so I had to go ahead and order it.

How the Moomins Showed Us a More Compassionate World At the Brooklyn Public Library, an exhibition on queer Finnish artist Tove Jansson's beloved characters reminds visitors of all ages that justice and joy are within our grasp.

There’s a reason Tove Jansson threw herself into writing the story of the Moomins. When World War II broke out, painting seemed meaningless. But in that moment, fashioning another world meant something — one where trolls aren’t enemies, but friends, and fairy tale conventions give way to justice.

The Community of Nuchi Du Takara ("Life Is the Ultimate Treasure") in Postwar Okinawa Against the background of the prolonged US military presence in post–World War II Okinawa, The Community of Nuchi Du Takara (“Life Is the Ultimate Treasure”) in Postwar Okinawa explores the conflict b...

Just saw an announcement for this book, which came out earlier this year. Definitely relevant to my interests.

The Community of Nuchi Du Takara ("Life Is the Ultimate Treasure") in Postwar Okinawa: Local Subjectivity within and against Empire
by Masamichi (Marro) Inoue

Remember in 2002 when the GW Bush government began referring to the US as the "homeland", which sounded so weird at the time? And then we got the Department of Homeland Security, which just perpetuated that terminology.

Yeah, language / metaphors matter.

It seems like a show I’d like though

I’ll be honest with you - Gasaraki fell through the cracks for me when it came out and I never got around to picking it back up

Stylish cyberpunk cover

Cyberpunk issue of SF Magazine from 1986