Martin Spivey

Let him dream!

22 degrees apparently. 😱 Summer already! 😅

The moment I knew: as soon we parted I realised Hitomi was the one. I waited years to see her again There was a language barrier, a mother who burned their letters and a record label manager who disapproved. But Kerry Cox and Hitomi were madly in love

The moment I knew: as soon we parted I realised Hitomi was the one. I waited years to see her again

You come at Junya Suzuki, you come at me! 😡 😆

Another example of a player who took far big of a leap (moving from low-mid-table J2 Akita to J1 FC Tokyo) and has hardly had a solid run of starts since.

Ideally, he would have gone to a top 6 J2 side and played his way higher.

I honestly despair at the current offside rules. The whole purpose was to stop players goal-hanging or at least gaining a significant advantage. If you have to watch repeated freeze frames because you can't tell then surely no clear advantage was gained?!

"Oh, his left pinky looks off!" 🙄 😆

Most of his goals for Akita were headers. He did well to go on that goal-scoring run for us but there wasn't too much evidence he'd be able to play at the top end of J1. Early days but it seems far too big a jump.

Hasn't had that many minutes to be fair to him! 😅

And if they followed UK standards so many more games would get postponed due to waterlogged pitches. I'm genuinely surprised how little care they seem to have for player welfare (on this particular issue anyway). I've seen Akita play in huge puddles and it's considered an acceptable playing surface!

New episode - number 80!

Worse was taking a Japanese income to the UK last summer. 😆😢

Eating out was a shock. 2 or 3 times the price here if not more.

Salaries are also a lot lower than the UK and haven't increased at all/much in 30 years.

Media watch: Government keeps its distance from Japanese language learning for foreigners Foreigners attending night junior high school (Withnews) In Japan, compulsory education stops after junior high school, and though the vast majority of Japanese people now graduate from high school…

Soft xenophobia: Japanese govt. not proactive about foreigners learning Japanese language bit.ly/4alTcGb #夜間中学校 #外国人のための日本語教育

Ugh. Sorry it was such a short sleep. I remember my twin daughters as babies and they would take turns to sleep/be awake 😆 I think they did it on purpose...😂

Out now! Special issue of @registerstudies.bsky.social, edited with @shelleystaples.bsky.social on Register and Professional Discourse. Papers address register in a range of contexts, inc. architecture, business, higher education, journalism, legal practice & virtual workspaces. Read more below!

What is it about, may I ask? Sounds intriguing!

They'd enjoy it more if you weren't smashing them on their debut/pre-debut! 😂

And in Spain they play matches at like 9/10pm to avoid the heat. There are cultural differences at play too. Crowds would be really low here if games weren't finishing til midnight!

The trouble with matching the J League calendar to Europe's is that large parts of Japan have more extreme weather in summer/winter. Hence two big periods with no matches. Will feel like two different seasons at least! 😅

I honestly wonder if they'd be better off having two short seasons over a 12-month period. The winter break is as long as a gap between seasons anyway! Squads could look totally different after the break.

This is like an Akita Golden Week. Pitiful! 😅

To be fair, if you're gunna blood young players, this is the time to do it. Of course, the first choice 11 will all want lots of game time but there isn't too much pressure on the clubs to do well.

Thanks for the info! Imagine signing for a J1 club in winter having never made a J1 appearance then getting sold down to J2/3 in the summer... 😭😬

Do you know how these games will be recorded in future? For the likes of JEF CB Kawano this is his "J1 debut". Or is it? 🤔 Obviously can't work for J2/J3 leagues. I suspect they'll have a separate category for this tourney.

Solid editorial work from @bforchtner.bsky.social and @francozappettini.bsky.social

🔓 You can read the pre-print of my chapter 'Anything goes? Integrating Qualitative and Quantitative Methods in Critical Discourse Studies' here: www.researchgate.net/publication/...

Congratulations and thanks for the link!

From sloppers to slopocalypse: The lexical productivity of AI slop At the end of last year, I wrote a blog post in which I dissected the word ‘enshittification’, a staple of AI slang. At the beginning of this year, I want to do the same for enshittification’s conc…

Interesting (as well as a bit depressing). Just read this blogpost the other day:

makingsciencepublic.com/2026/01/02/f...

Out now: 'What is good care, and who is it good for? A Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis of UK care home websites'. Chapter led by @emma-putland.bsky.social with Kevin Harvey in the Handbook on Critical Discourse Studies: www.e-elgar.com/shop/gbp/han.... Accepted version in original post below!

Deborah Cameron obituary Linguist, feminist activist and author of influential books on how language can shape gendered experiences

www.theguardian.com/education/20...

In this chapter, I map the field of linguistically informed critical studies of #power and #governance, identify key trends, and point to future avenues of research

www.researchgate.net/publication/...

‘Fascists threatened us but we always took them on’: the anarchic Bradford club still fighting after 45 years A new book and podcast tell the story of a 1 in 12, a venue that used community and artistic passion as bulwarks against poverty and grim politics. Its founders and key acts recall gigs, plays and pranks on the NME

‘Fascists threatened us but we always took them on’: the anarchic Bradford club still fighting after 45 years