#authored several academic articles

[i-am-a-fish]

Here are some of the ways that you can support Palestine

Attend protests:

Here is a link listing several protests. If you do not see a protest that you were planning to attend or if you would like to organize one, you can submit that information into this website. This is not the only website for finding protests, I recommend searching for this on your own, but this was the most prominent website I could find.

Be informed:

Here is an interview with Omar Barghouti, the founder of Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel.

This video contains no gore, has closed captions, and is well organized with a clear call to action. There are many videos and articles that should be watched and read, this is just one example.

Specifically at 29:44, Omar Barghouti explains what you can do as a viewer, though I believe the entire video should be watched.

Boycott:

In the previous video, Omar Barghouti explained that an economic boycott needs to be organized in order to incite change. Targeting your boycotts is an effective strategy that has worked in the past. Here is a website listing every company that is actively supporting Israel during the Palestinian genocide.

This list is regularly updated by the Article's author. Do not harass the customer service employees that are working at these places.

Be strategic and organized, there are many companies on this list. Boycott whatever you are able, and be vocal to these companies on social media, particularly on Twitter if you have an account. These companies care a lot about their reputation, and many of them may relent if called out on a large scale.

Donate:

This is Anera, they are credible non-profit. There are many other organizations, but this one in particular has been around since 1968, and donates 96% of revenue to Palestine, Lebanon, and Jordan.

This is a small list of resources to get started. Do research, be vocal, boycott, and donate if you are financially able to do so.

[legallybrunettedotcom]

BUFFY READING LIST

As promised @possession1981 and I have compiled a list of Buffy the Vampire Slayer (and Angel) related academic text and books. I think this is a good starting point for both a long time fan and for someone just getting into the show, or just someone interested in vampire lore. I have included several books about the vampire lore and myth in general as well. Most of these are available online.

BOOKS

Fighting the Forces: What's at Stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer; edited by Rhonda V. Wilcox & David Lavery

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Philosophy - Fear and Trembling in Sunnydale by James B. South

Buffy Goes Dark: Essays on the Final Two Seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer on Television, edited by Lynne Y. Edwards, Elizabeth L. Rambo & James B. South

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Myth, Metaphor and Morality by Mark Field

Televised Morality: The Case of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Gregory Stevenson

Undead TV: Essays on Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Elana Levine

The Aesthetics of Culture in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Matthew Pateman

Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks by Emily Pohl-Weary

Why Buffy Matters: The Art of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Ronda Wilcox

Into Every Generation a Slayer Is Born: How Buffy Staked Our Hearts by Evan Ross Katz

The Lure of the Vampire: Gender, Fiction, and Fandom from Bram Stoker to Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Milly Williamson

Blood Relations: Chosen Families in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel by Jes Battis

Sex and the Slayer: A Gender Studies Primer for the Buffy Fan by Lorna Jowett

Diseases of the Head: Essays on the Horrors of Speculative Philosophy; edited by Matt Rosen (chapter 2 Death of Horror)

Public Privates: Feminist Geographies of Mediated Spaces by Marcia R. England (chapter 1 Welcome to the Hellmouth: Paradoxical Spaces in Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Open Graves, Open Minds: Representations of Vampires and the Undead From the Enlightenment to the Present Day; edited by Sam George and Bill Hughes (chapter 8 ‘I feel strong. I feel different’: transformations, vampires and language in Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

The Contemporary Television Series; edited by Michael Hammond and Lucy Mazdon (chapter 9 Television, Horror and Everyday Life in Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

Joss Whedon and Race: Critical Essays; edited by Mary Ellen Iatropoulos and Lowery A. Woodall III

Buffy and the Heroine's Journey: Vampire Slayer as Feminine Chosen One by Valerie Estelle Frankel

The Existential Joss Whedon: Evil and Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly and Serenity by J. Michael Richardson and J. Douglas Rabb

Buffy the Vampire Slayer 20 Years of Slaying: The Watcher's Guide Authorized by Christopher Golden

Reading the Vampire Slayer: The Complete, Unofficial Guide to 'Buffy' and 'Angel' by Roz Kaveney

Hollywood Vampire: The Unnoficial Guide to Angel by Keith Topping

Buffy the Vampire Slayer: The Monster Book by Christopher Golden

Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon by Michael Adams

What Would Buffy Do? The Vampire Slayer as Spiritual Guide by Jana Riess

ARTICLES, PAPERS ETC.

Bibliographic Good vs. Evil in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by GraceAnne A. DeCandido

Undead Letters: Searches and Researches in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by William Wandless

Weaponised information: The role of information and metaphor in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jacob Ericson

Buffy, Dark Romance and Female Horror Fans by Lorna Jowett

My Vampire Boyfriend: Postfeminism, "Perfect" Masculinity, and the Contemporary Appeal of Paranormal Romance by Ananya Mukherjea

Buffy, The Vampire Slayer as Spectacular Allegory: A Diagnostic Critique by Douglas Kellner

"Buffy the Vampire Slayer": Technology, Mysticism, and the Constructed Body by Sara Raffel

When Horror Becomes Human: Living Conditions in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" by Jeroen Gerrits

Post-Vampire: The Politics of Drinking Humans and Animals in "Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Twilight", and "True Blood" by Laura Wright

Cops, Teachers, and Vampire Slayers: Buffy as Street-Level Bureaucrat by Andrea E. Mayo

"Not Like Other Men"?: The Vampire Body in Joss Whedon's "Angel" by Lorna Jowett

Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the Domestic Church: Revisioning Family and the Common Good by Reid B. Locklin

“Buffy vs. Dracula”’s Use of Count Famous (Not drawing “crazy conclusions about the unholy prince”) by Tara Elliott

A Little Less Ritual and a Little More Fun: The Modern Vampire in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Stacey Abbott

Undressing the Vampire: An Investigation of the Fashion of Sunnydale’s Vampires by Robbie Dale

"And Yet": The Limits of Buffy Feminism by Renee St. Louis & Miriam Riggs

Meet the Cullens: Family, Romance and Female Agency in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Twilight by Kirsten Stevens

Bliss and Time: Death, Drugs, and Posthumanism in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Rob Cover

That Girl: Bella, Buffy, and the Feminist Ethics of Choice in Twilight and Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Catherine Coker

A Slayer Comes to Town: An Essay on Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Scott Westerfeld 

Undead Objects of a “Queer Gaze” : A Visual Approach to Buffy’s Vampires Using Lacan’s Extended RSI Model by Marcus Recht

When You Kiss Me, I Want to Die: Gothic Relationships and Identity on Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Ananya Mukherjeea

Necrophilia and SM: The Deviant Side of Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Terry L. Spaise

Queering the Bitch: Spike, Transgression and Erotic Empowerment by Dee Amy-Chinn

“I Want To Be A Macho Man”: Examining Rape Culture, Adolescent Female Sexuality, and the Destabilization of Gender Binaries in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Angelica De Vido

Staking Her Claim: Buffy the Vampire Slayer as Transgressive Woman Warrior by Frances H. Early

Actualizing Abjection: Drusilla, the Whedonversees’ Queen of Queerness by Anthony Stepniak

“Life Isn’t A Story”: Xander, Andrew and Queer Disavowal in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Steven Greenwood

S/He’s a Rebel: The James Dean Trope in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Kathryn Hill

“Once More, with Feeling”: Emotional Self-Discipline in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Gwynnee Kennedy and Jennifer Dworshack-Kinter

“The Hardest Thing in This World Is To Live In It”: Identity and Mental Health in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Alex Fixler

"Love's Bitch But Man Enough to Admit It": Spikes Hybridized Gender by Arwen Spicer

Negotiations After Hegemony: Buffy and Gender by Franklin D. Worrell

Double Trouble: Gothic Shadows and Self-Discovery in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Elizabeth Gilliland

'What If I'm Still There? What If I Never Left That Clinic?': Faërian Drama in Buffy's "Normal Again" by Janet Brennan Croft

Not Gay Enough So You’d Notice: Poaching Fuffy by Jennifer DeRoss

Throwing Like A Slayer: A Phenomenology of Gender Hybridity and Female Resilience in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Debra Jackson

“You Can’t Charge Innocent People for Saving Their Lives!” Work in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Matt Davies

Ambiguity and Sexuality in Buffy the Vampire Slayer: A Sartrean Analysis by Vivien Burr

Imagining the Family: Representations of Alternative Lifestyles in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Vivien Burr and Christine Jarvis

Working-Class Hero? Fighting Neoliberal Precarity in Buffy’s Sixth Season by Michelle Maloney-Mangold

A Corpse by Any Other Name: Romancing the Language of the Body in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein for the Adam Storyline in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Amber P. Hodge

Sensibility Gone Mad: Or, Drusilla, Buffy and the (D)evolution of the Heroine of Sensibility by Claire Knowles

"It's good to be me": Buffy's Resistance to Renaming by Janet Brennan Croft

Death as a Gift in J.R.R. Tolkien’s Work and Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Gaelle Abalea

“All Torment, Trouble, Wonder, and Amazement Inhabits Here": The Vicissitudes of Technology in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by James B. South

Staking Her Colonial Claim: Colonial Discourses, Assimilation, Soul-making, and Ass-kicking in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Jessica Hautsch

“I Run To Death”: Renaissance Sensibilities in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Christine Jarvis

Dressed To Kill: Fashion and Leadership in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Christine Jarvis and Don Adams

Queer Eye Of That Vampire Guy: Spike and the Aesthetics of Camp by Cynthea Masson and Marni Stanley

“Sounds Like Kinky Business To Me”: Subtextual and Textual Representations of Erotic Power in Buffyverse by Lewis Call

“Did Anyone Ever Explain to You What ‘Secret Identity’ Means?”: Race and Displacement in Buffy and Dark Angel  by Cynthia Fuchs

“It’s About Power”: Buffy, Foucault, and the Quest for Self by Julie Sloan Brannon

Why We Love the Monsters: How Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer Wound Up Dating the Enemy by Hilary M. Leon

Why We Can’t Spike Spike?: Moral Themes in Buffy the Vampire Slayer by Richard Greene and Wayne Yuen

Buffy, the Scooby Gang, and Monstrous Authority: BtVS and the Subversion of Authority by Daniel A. Clark & P. Andrew Miller

Are Vampires Evil?: Categorizations of Vampires, and Angelus and Spike as the Immoral and the Amoral by Gert Magnusson

BOOKS ABOUT VAMPIRE LORE AND MYTH IN GENERAL

The Vampire Lectures by Laurence A. Rickels 

Our Vampires, Ourselves by Nina Auerbach

Vampires, Burial, and Death: Folklore and Reality by Paul Barber

The Secret History of Vampires: Their Multiple Forms and Hidden Purposes by Claude Lecouteux

The Vampire Cinema by David Pirie

The Living and the Undead: Slaying Vampires, Exterminating Zombies by Gregory A. Waller

Vampire Forensics: Uncovering the Origins of an Enduring Legend by Mark Jenkins

Slayers and Their Vampires: A Cultural History of Killing the Dead by Bruce A. McClelland

The History and Folklore of Vampires: The Stories and Legends Behind the Mythical Beings by Charles River Editors

Encyclopedia of Vampire Mythology by Theresa Bane

Vampires of Lore: Traits and Modern Misconceptions by A. P. Sylvia

The Vampire: A New History by Nick Groom

Vampyres: Genesis and Resurrection: from Count Dracula to Vampirella by Christopher Frayling

Race in the Vampire Narrative by U. Melissa Anyiwo

Vampires, Race, and Transnational Hollywoods by Dale Hudson

[mariacallous]

“There are only so many books on Ukraine we can review each month,” an editor from a major British newspaper tells me at one of the country’s largest literary festivals. He looks a bit uncomfortable, almost apologetic. He wants me to understand that if it were up to him, he’d review a book on Ukraine every day, but that’s just not how the industry works.

Since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion, I’ve had a glimpse into how several industries work: Publishing, journalism, and the broader world of culture, including galleries and museums. Even before the big war, I knew more than I wanted to about how academia works (or rather doesn’t) when it comes to Ukraine. A common thread among all these fields is the limited attention they allocate to countries that do not occupy a place among the traditional big players of imperial politics.

Cultural imperialism lives on, even if its carriers often proclaim anti-colonial slogans. It thrives in gate-keeping, with editors and academics mistrusting voices that don’t sound like those higher up the ladder, while platforming those who have habitually been accepted as authoritative. “We’ve done Ukraine already” is a frequent response whenever you pitch an idea, text, or public event centering the country.

The editor who can’t keep publishing reviews of Ukraine-related books walks away, and I pick up a copy of one of the UK’s most prominent literary magazines to see their book recommendations. Out of a handful of reviews, three are on recent books about Russia. It seems like the space afforded to Russia remains unlimited. I close the publication to keep my blood pressure down.

Keeping my blood pressure down, however, is challenging. When my social media feeds aren’t advertising another production of Uncle Vanya, they’re urging me to splash out on opera tickets for Eugene Onegin. What happened to the dreaded “cancelling” of Russian culture? The Russia section in most bookshops I visit in the UK is growing daily with everything from yet another translation of Dostoevsky to accounts of opposition figures killed or imprisoned by the Kremlin.

The international media focus on the August 2024 release of Russian political prisoners was yet another example of how the more things change, the more they stay the same. While these released prisoners were provided with a global media platform to call for an end to “unfair” sanctions on “ordinary Russians,” there was no mention of the thousands of Ukrainian civilians who continue to languish in Russian jails.

The ongoing international emphasis on all things Russian goes hand in hand with a reluctance to transform growing interest in Ukraine into meaningful structural changes in how the country is perceived, reported on, and understood. Although there has been some improvement in knowledge about Ukraine since 2022, the move is essentially from having no understanding to having a superficial grasp.

Each time I read a piece on Ukraine by someone not well-versed in the country’s history and politics, my heart sinks. The chances are it will recycle historical cliches, repeat Kremlin propaganda about Russophone Ukrainians, or generalize about regional differences. And to add insult to injury, such articles also often misspell at least one family or place name, using outdated Russian transliterations. A quick Google search or a message to an actual Ukrainian could prevent these errors and save the author from looking foolish. Yet aiding this kind of colonial complacency seems to bother neither the authors nor the editors involved.

I often wonder what would happen if I wrote a piece on British or US politics and misspelt the names of historical figures, towns, and cities. How likely would I be to get it published? And yet the same standards do not apply when it comes to writing about countries that have not been granted priority status in our mental hierarchies of the world. We can misspell them all we like; no one will notice anyway. Apart from the people from those countries, of course. And when an exasperated Ukrainian writes to complain, I can almost see the editors rolling their eyes and thinking, “What does this perpetually frustrated nation want now? We’ve done Ukraine. Why are they never satisfied?”

It is not enough to simply “do Ukraine” by reviewing one book on the war, especially if it’s by a Western journalist rather than a Ukraine-based author. It’s not enough to host one exhibition, particularly if it is by an artist or photographer who only spent a few weeks in the country. Quickly putting together a panel on Russia’s war in response to a major development at the front and adding a sole Ukrainian voice at the last minute doesn’t cut it either. This box-ticking approach is unhelpful and insulting.

It is important to acknowledge that some Western media outlets have significantly enhanced their coverage of Ukraine over the past two and a half years. They have typically done so by dedicating time and resources to having in-house experts who have either reported from Ukraine for many years, or who are committed to deepening their knowledge enough to produce high-quality analysis. However, many of these outlets still seem compelled to provide platforms for individuals entirely unqualified to analyse the region. Surely this isn’t what balance means?

Since February 2022, more than 100 Ukrainian cultural figures have been killed in the war. According to the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, by May 2024, over 2,000 cultural institutions had been damaged or destroyed. This includes 711 libraries, 116 museums and galleries, and 37 theatres, cinemas, and concert halls. In May 2024, Russia bombed Factor Druk, the country’s biggest printing house.

When I attended this year’s Kyiv Book Arsenal, Ukraine’s largest literary festival, each panel began with a minute of silence to honor the memory of colleagues killed in the war. All this is in addition to mounting military losses, many of whom are yesterday’s civilians, including journalists and creatives who have either volunteered or been drafted into the army. This is the current state of the Ukrainian creative industry.

To save time for Western editors, publishers, and curators, let me clarify what all of us perpetually frustrated Ukrainians want. We would appreciate it if they turned to actual Ukraine specialists when working on Ukraine-related themes. Not those who suddenly pivoted from specializing in Russia, or who feel entitled to speak authoritatively because they discovered a distant Ukrainian ancestor, or those who have only recently shown interest in Ukraine due to business opportunities in the country’s reconstruction. We would be grateful if they took the time to seek out experts who have been studying Ukraine long before it became fashionable, who understand the country in all its complexity, and who care enough to offer Ukrainians the basic dignity of having their names spelt correctly.

I like to fantasise about a time when editors of top Western periodicals will choose to review books on Ukraine not simply because the country is at war and they feel obliged to cover it now and again, but because these books offer vital insights into democracy, the fight for freedom, or the importance of maintaining unity and a sense of humor in times of crisis. I hope for a day when galleries will host exhibitions of Ukrainian art, not just because it was rescued from a war zone, but because the artists involved provide fresh perspectives on the world.

I also dream that we, the perpetually frustrated Ukraine specialists, will eventually be able to focus on our own scholarship and creativity rather than correcting the mistakes and misleading takes of others. This will happen when cultural institutions, publishing houses, universities, and newspapers acquire in-house experts whose knowledge of Ukraine and the wider region extends beyond Russia.

Dr Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian and writer. She is the author of The Death of a Soldier Told by His Sister (2022). Khromeychuk has written for The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, The Guardian, Der Spiegel, Prospect, and The New Statesman, and has delivered a TED talk on What the World Can Learn From Ukraine’s Fight for Democracy. She has taught the history of East-Central Europe at several British universities and is currently the Director of the Ukrainian Institute London.

[trans-cuchulainn]

unfortunately i think my discovery of a 17th century reference to an 18th century story might actually be significant for the relative dating of them both and. sigh. I really don't want to have to do actual academic work about this but SOMEBODY'S gotta

the thing is. this edition was done in 2008 but it's an unpublished thesis. it doesn't reference that story at all. the most recent thing written about that story was published in 2009, by somebody who did know about this thesis (he's mentioned in several footnotes) but who didn't cite it in that article and who wasn't really focused on the aspect of the story that corresponds with this other text. so. essentially the scholarship on these two texts has not yet overlapped

which means i might be the only person to have noticed that it is very specifically referencing events that only happen in that story

and either this editor fucked up and got the manuscript date wrong by a century... or i'm about to fuck everybody's established dating of that other story. woohoo. which means fucking the dating of another story also since it's been demonstrated they're by the same author. lol whoops.

the GOOD news though is that this text is also written in ulster, like that one, so it is clearly a northern tradition they're drawing on (and arguably could be a ref to some local oral tales that hadn't been written yet so the story could be later even if this is referencing its contents)

[binaural-histolog]

Zotoro, Scihub, and more Cool Hypnosis Papers

CW: severe nerdery

I don't have an academic background, and while I've been poking around at hypnosis nerdery for a while, I was limited to an extent by what I could get my hands on.

This is especially important when it comes to the academic texts. There's only so many books out there on theory, and a bunch of it doesn't make sense until you go back and read the actual papers.

For example, I knew that Kirsch had something to do with placebo and expectations, but I only had a vague understanding of what and how. A paragraph critique in Theories of Hypnosis wasn't enough to give me the proper context.

Until I decided I was going to rewrite the newbie guide to explain hypnosis from a modern neuroscience perspective and then I was committed to pulling the citations and digging up the actual papers.

At first I was doing it by hand by pasting things into Scihub and downloading the PDFs. This sort of worked, but at some point there are just too many PDFs and it's work to keep them consistent.

This is where Zotero comes in. It's a PDF database that is set up to scan for academic fields and give you a UI for finding, reading and annotating the PDFs. It syncs between MacOS, Windows, and iOS and keeps the annotations and highlights. And even better, it's got plugins.

Specifically, it's got a plugin for Scihub. You can add a DOI number and it'll pull the abstract data for the paper, and then you can right click and it'll download the paper from Scihub automatically.

It doesn't cover everything. Some stuff is too new for Scihub, and I've had to fallback to https://reddit.com/r/scholar to request articles, but there's so much stuff.

In particular, you get the sense of how academic papers can be a conversation, an argument, or a lawsuit. You get to see the most brutal putdowns phrased as passing comments. And the grudges and ego can go on for decades.

There are a couple of papers that I recommend everyone read, because they're just great at summarizing the field and current thinking.

The response set theory of hypnosis reconsidered: toward an integrative model

I love this paper not just because it goes over response expectancy theory from the inception to the general whittling down from "Once expectancy effects are eliminated, there may be nothing left" to response expectancy as 25%-35% of suggestibility and the addition of a "readiness response set" to cover the rest of it... but also because despite Kirsch's hand in response set theory and response expectancies and being in a journal issue devoted to Kirsch's career and achievements, he is not an author to this paper that is reconsidering his work. Instead, he gets a hand clap.

In closing, Irving Kirsch has greatly advanced our understanding of hypnosis. The construct of expectancies that he articulated and championed for decades has well withstood the test of time and replication. We extend our personal gratitude to him for his shaping influence on our personal views of hypnosis and for his many contributions to the field of hypnosis that he so immensely enriched.

I'm not sure what I'm looking at, but I love it.

How Hypnotic Suggestions Work – A Systematic Review of Prominent Theories of Hypnosis

This is a preprint, but it's comprehensive not just in how it picks out theories of hypnosis that are more recent than the book, but also in how it pokes holes and points out weak points in the various theories. It's also recent enough to talk about fun new things like predictive coding and interoception and somatosensory feedback.

Hypnosis and top-down regulation of consciousness

Devin Terhune's papers are always good to read. His papers read like a story where every chapter builds on the last one. This one is a "synthesis of current knowledge regarding the characteristics and neurocognitive mechanisms of hypnosis" and I can't tell you how many times I've read through this paper by accident because I wanted to pick a point out of it and got sucked into it all over again.

[bavarianredsblog]

The Other Side of Suzui Ryota

What do you think of Suzui Ryota from Kakegurui? I can tell that most of you will tell that he's a useless character who always follows Yumeko's to wherever he go.

Most of Kakegurui fans are even not sure of what's purpose that Ryota serves in the Kakegurui plot so far and even in some forums, I saw many people makes fun of him by saying "Who the fuck is Suzui?" and there's also limited fanfictions or fanarts about him too.

Well, everybody can have their opinions, but is it justified to plainly deem Suzui Ryota as useless characters? I'm personally thinking it's not and I have one sole reason for it.

It is because Suzui Ryouta might be the only character in Kakegurui that has not clear past and much details besides the ones that the viewers saw in anime and the readers saw in the manga.

Kakegurui franchise has been up and running since 2017 until now. Besides its main manga, it's also already produced the character's spin-off like Mary's Kakegurui Twin or Midari in her own manga story.

And yet, In all those things, Suzui Ryouta's past or details about him are still lies in darkness while the other characters like Kirari, Sayaka, Yumeko, Mary, and many others are having their own "explanations" about who they are, what they do, and so on.

To understand that, first we need to at least to knows what's the intent of the author for Ryouta's character. In many articles, it is stated that Ryota is positioned as "observer" and "storyteller" to what's happened in Kakegurui's series, particularly about Yumeko's journey where he was acted as her companion throughout the story.

Compared to other characters, Ryouta seems doesn't have "other clear purpose" other than being a support and close friend to Yumeko.

But keep in mind that the official wiki still officially recognized Ryota as one of the main protagonists of the series. Then, it is raised some questions which correlates to my early statement. If he's one of the protagonists, then why any details regarding who he actually is and his past are very limited? or Will there any character development for him in the future?

To answer those questions, we will need to breakdown some key points about him and his correlation to the plot.

We already know a little about Ryouta in the beginning as he was fell into housepet status after losing to Mary in a gambling game, then he met Yumeko who helped him regain his human status, and then starts a friendship with her.

Besides of that, Ryota is also shown holding a position as class representation. Anything other than that ? nada. We don't know much more about his other activities in the school like if he's belong to any clubs in the school and so on.

Other things about him is, he's actually a very smart person who's excelling in his academic study (although Hyakkaou Academy is not focusing much on academic or sports). He's also very quick to understand what's going on in a gamble (both involved or just watching) and also has an expertise to analyse every single details and devising solutions.

This traits of his is showing several times in both manga and anime version, particularly around Yumeko's gamble against Midari where his approach is succesfully getting both him and Yumeko out from danger of Midari's game of death or how he quickly realize Kirari's manipulation on the entire tarot game.

It shows that Ryota is actually a good gambler and he has so many potentials on it. The only thing that holds him back is his low self-esteem, reluctant personality and low level of confidence. When he's with Yumeko, he's not only watch over her but he also learns a lot from her and after so many chapters in the manga, he's shown a growth in his gambling skills and confidence level which one point for his character development.

Another interesting point about him is how he seems the only one in Kakegurui franchise who doesn't have "psychopatic" traits like the others. He's shown to be a nice and kind person who also rarely holds grudge against people. His personality is calm and sensible which also added by his honesty trait.

Looking at those, it seems that we are looking Ryouta as the only colored thing in the middle of black and white. This is his exceptional things that makes him different and also on the same time, special from the other characters. To put it more dramatically, Ryota is like the sailor whose ship is trying to survive in the sea of madness which is the Hyakkaou Academy.

After that, from here thing is getting more interesting. Who is Suzui Ryouta actually is and his family background?

To begin with, there's no clear details on that, but the wiki said that he has unnamed parents. A Day after Yumeko helped him pay his 5 million yen debt to student council, Ryota is offering 1 million yen that he borrows from his parents to pay Yumeko back which Yumeko simply refused.

It's indicating that Ryota is coming from a rich family while it's also considering that how he can enrol in Hyakkaou possibly from regular way where he need to make frequent deposit to student council and school fee.

But who is Ryota's family is still clouded in dark. But we might have a lead on this. In one reddit thread few years ago, it is said that Ryota is coming from a famous wealthy baker family with the brand name "Seikadou". Here's the overview.

The interruptions when he's about to saying "Oh, It's our ..." is really one strong proof about his family's business. It is still not confirmed yet, but this cake business theory is the most logical one to explain more about him.

Another thing about him is, people don't realize that he is actually existed all the time in any of Kakegurui franchises so far, whether it's the main manga, twin, or Midari.

For example, both Kakegurui twin and Kakegurui Midari are both set in the previous year of main Kakegurui manga plot which makes Ryota is strongly possible in both spin-offs, although his names are not mentioned.

But is is definitely happened since the gap between the two spin-offs and the main story is only one year apart which means that Ryota is already there wandering the school and knows every events in both spin-offs like the raise of Mary, the full bloom society, and so on. After all, Ryota's is very aware of his surroundings so he's keeping on track.

What's he's doing on that period? It's still a big mystery, but judging from his behaviour, he might be living a quiet and ordinary gambling and schooling far from the spotlight. As mentioned above too, there's also question if whether he's involved in a club's school too.

Well, I can't say for sure, but Ryota is probably involved in one or maybe just spend his days of gambling and socializing with his friends. Just a completely ordinary guy.

For his love interest, well it's pretty obvious that Ryota probably holds a secret romantic feeling for Yumeko. He's stated it in sublime way when he's confessed that he wants to keep watching her in the best seat and walk with her when they faced Kirari in a tarot game. He even said that Yumeko's risk is also his risk which shows that he is ready to die anytime for Yumeko.

From this point, we already know there's so many undiscovered thing about Ryota's personal life and how his character's development happened in both manga and the anime which happened to be a lot without people noticing.

Being on the side of Yumeko all the time, Ryota is influenced by her but still in a positive way and accordingly. He's still trying to be himself and hopefully more of him will coming up so soon.

And that's it.

Hope you guys enjoy it.

Give me your thoughts in the comments yeah ?

[ghelgheli]

17! but also using the opportunity of the ask game to get to know more about the effortless worldbuilding in sff :)

from the end-of-year book ask

17: Did any books surprise you with how good they were?

I think Three Body Problem is the only one meeting this condition this year so I'll have no trouble staying on topic :> but I'm gonna specifically talk about "hard" SF as I conceive of it—I haven't read any analysis so this may just be a jumble of improvised thoughts.

SF, being "speculative" fiction, of course has to take on the problem of speculating and of presenting things that don't (and perhaps cannot) happen. On average this is accomplished thru a healthy combination of scientific grounding and good-natured handwaving: I drop a few sentences about "quantum entanglement" and you go along with my ansible, or you tell me about "positronic circuits" and I agree that you can make a brain with them. This is the compact that makes SF work because you fundamentally cannot expect speculation without, well, ceding ground on reality.

But at least a subset of SF readers are of the kind to really want to grok how it is that this or that scientific feature of the world works or may come about. Every contraption and novel technology is like a puzzle to be riddled out. This is the place where speculation becomes sincere mechanical prediction, and it's why I love hard SF.

This subset of readers can be matched to a subgenre of writers who commit fully to filling in as many blanks in their technological, biological, etc. speculation as possible. The rows of astronomical data can't be left vague—tell me what frequency of light we're dealing with here—xenobiology isn't taken for granted—what is the neurology of your aliens??—and so on. The dots are connected, the rest of the owl is drawn for real, the image is made crisp. Like fireworks for the reader's brain.

When this kind of worldbuilding is executed well imo it looks effortless. Looks, not is, because behind every explanation of near-c travel is hours of research into at least special relativity and time dilation, along with calculations by-hand. Behind every account of an exoplanet's atmosphere is probably a few papers perused on the subject and several articles on scientific american. Peter Watts, in the note at the end of Blindsight, includes a fucking bibliography of a hundred or so references as well as thank-yous to many an academic he split handles of liquor with. And this is only the visible fragment of what has to be a library of knowledge accumulated both passively and actively to make a speculated world feel as concretely plausible as possible.

None of this is necessary for good SF. The aforementioned compact means any author can opt out of this commitment at any time. But it's what it takes to make tightly-written hard SF, where your conceptual hands are kept diligently at your side, waving an idea through maybe once every five chapters when you have no other choice.

So anyway, Three Body Problem is a tour de force in doing this and doing it cleanly. It uses a storytelling device a lot of hard SF employs to make it work: rather than stuffing dense exposition into narration (at which point, just read the source papers) it deploys a cast of characters who more than anything else, really know their shit. We get exposition trickle-fed through experts who are trying, along with us, to make sense of their novel environments and unfamiliar technologies using their knowledge of the present limits of human understanding. This is what Watts does in Blindsight too, by the way: a claustrophobic ship crewed by technical specialists makes first contact, so everyone has something encyclopedic to say about everything and it's only natural.

What astounded me about Cixin Liu's writing is that he made it work just when I least thought he would be able to. I was sure I was being shown things completely inexplicable and necessarily supernatural until he went and explained them in plain terms; better yet, he explained them in ways that made so much sense in retrospect that I was kicking myself for not seeing the answer. This has exactly the flavour of a good puzzle.

The trade-off hard SF makes is that you are often limited in the metaphorical/thematic work you can do through your speculation. I think the contrast between "calendrical science" in Yoon Ha Lee's Machineries of Empire series and Asimov's "psychohistory" illustrates this well.

Yoon Ha Lee has mathematical training, and calendrical science is a speculative field consisting of theorems, conjectures, proofs, etc. in the language of mathematics that stand in for cultural hegemony and power projection. This makes for a great operationalization of soft power: space is filled and distorted by the quantifiable effects of whatever regime is dominant there (the "calendar" here being synecdoche for culture writ large). But obviously he can't fill in the blanks of how a calendar causes spacetime distortions that specifically make one side's weapons more effective, or provide certain formations with shielding effects. This is, I guess, semi-hard (lol) SF—you can see how it's supposed to work, but it's clear that it just won't. What you get in return is pretty politically interesting storytelling.

Psychohistory is the converse: a deterministic-enough lovechild of economics and sociology explained in the Foundation series as using all the familiar methods of linear algebra and differential equations together with unfamiliar innovations of just how to quantify human behaviour in order to make reliable predictions. There are entire chapters dedicated to explaining the conceptual nuance that went into developing psychohistory ("the hand on thigh principle" from prelude to foundation is just about how the theory resolves divergence by reducing insignificant terms to zero) and an entire book to exploring one of its limitations. It's fascinating to read. But you also get little narrative depth out of it, because hard SF, even when done well, is not guaranteed to make a story thematically interesting or politically compelling. This is the Three Body Problem problem too: its political commitments are threadbare and unserious because that's just not what it's about. I couldn't recommend it on those terms, but that's not what I like so much about it. I will say the conceptualization goes a little off the rails in the final chapters, but I think most SF authors were in some kind of string theory inspired fugue state at the time.

What I would love to see (and I'm sure exists) is hard SF that also has interesting politics. Unfortunately that's an intersection of two already-narrow intersections.

ty for ask✨🐐

[zaobitouguang]

Chinese Ethnic Minority Literature

I just finished taking an incredibly eye-opening class about Chinese ethnic minority literature. China has a thriving minority literature scene, and it's absolutely fascinating and full of interesting works, so I wanted to share some of the authors that I learned about this semester! This is, obviously, an incomplete list-- it's pretty heavily biased towards what we read about in class, and there's probably a lot I've missed!

For any authors with full works that have been translated into English, I've listed it under their names. Some other authors may also have poems or short stories published in translation online or in anthologies.

Hani 哈尼

Mo Du 莫獨 (b. 1963) - poems

Hui 回族

Huo Da 霍達 (b. 1945) - novels

The Jade King: History of a Chinese Muslim Family (1992)

Zhang Chengzhi 張承志 (b. 1948) -novels, short stories

The Black Steed (1990)

Korean 朝鮮族

Jin Renshun 金仁順 (b. 1970) - novels, short stories

Jin Wenxue 金文學 (b. 1962) - novels

Manchu 滿族

Duanmu Hongliang 端木蕻良 (1912-1996)

Lao She 老舍 (1899-1966) - novels, short stories, plays

Rickshaw Boy (1945, 2010)

Miao (Hmong) 苗族

He Xiaozhu 何小竹 (b. 1963) - poems, novels

Shen Congwen* 沈從文 (1902-1988) - novels, short stories

Imperfect Paradise (1995)

Border Town (2009)

Mongolian 蒙古族

Altai 阿爾泰 (b. 1949) - poems

Bao Liying 包麗英 (b. 1968) - novels

Baoyinhexige 寶音賀希格 - poems

Chen Ganglong 陳崗龍 (b. 1970) - poems

Guo Xuebo 郭雪波 (b. 1948) - novels, short stories

The Desert Wolf (1996)

Malaqinfu 瑪拉沁夫 (b. 1930)- novels

Naxi 納西族

Sha Li 沙蠡 (1953-2008) - novels

Yang Zhengwen 楊正文 (b. 1943) - novels

Qiang 羌族

Qiang Renliu 羌人六 (b. 1987) - poems

Yangzi/Yang Guoqing 羊子/楊國慶 - poems

Tibetan 藏族

Alai 阿來 (b. 1959) - novels, short stories

Red Poppies (2003)

The Song of King Gesar (2013)

Tashi Dawa 扎西達娃 (b. 1959) - novels, short stories

A Soul in Bondage: Stories from Tibet (1992)

Yangdron 央珍 (b. 1963) - novels

Uyghur 維吾爾族

Alat Asem 阿拉提·阿斯木 (b. 1958) - novels, short stories

Confessions of a Jade Lord (2019)

Wa/Va 佤族

Burao Yilu 布饒依露 - poems

Yi 彝族

Aku Wuwu 阿庫烏霧 (b. 1964) - poems, essays

Tiger Traces: Selected Nuosu and Chinese Poetry of Aku Wuwu (2006)

Coyote Traces: Aku Wuwu's Poetic Sojourn in America (2015)

Bamo Qubumo 巴莫曲佈嫫 (b. 1964) - poems, academic articles

Eni Mushasijia 俄尼·牧莎斯加 (b. 1970) - poems

Jidi Majia 吉狄馬加 (b. 1961) - poems

I, Snow Leopard (2016)

Words from the Fire: Poems by Jidi Majia (2018)

Jimu Langge 吉木狼格 (b. 1963) - poems

Lu Juan 魯��� (b. 1982) - poems

Ma Deqing 馬德清 (1952-2013) - poems, novels

Na Zhangyuan 納張元 (b. 1966) - essays

*Shen has both Miao and Tujia ancestry, as well as Han. However, I see him listed most frequently as Miao.

More Resources on Ethnic Minority Literature:

Altaic Storytelling: The blog of translator Bruce Humes (translator of Confessions of a Jade Lord, among other works). Has a fairly broad focus, but he's written a lot about ethnic minorities.

Chinese Academy of Social Sciences Institute of Ethnic Literature: China has a thriving infrastructure to support the writing of and research into ethnic minority literature, and this is one of the larger institutions. I believe their research focuses more on oral traditions, but they have some information about contemporary writers as well.

Chinese Women Writers on the Environment: An anthology of eco-fiction by female ethnic minority writers.

Golden Horse Award 駿馬獎: This is an annual award for ethnic minority literature. The wikipedia link lists all the previous winners.

The Leeds Center for New Chinese Writing: Again not specific to ethnic minorities, but features several ethnic minority authors.

Paper Republic: This organization is devoted to translated Chinese writing and isn't specific to ethnic minority literature but has information about and translations of some of the writers on this list.

Poetry International: This website isn't specific to ethnic minorities or even to China, but many of the poets on this list have pages there with a few poems translated into English.

[beardedmrbean]

Columbia, a year ago : "Punch a nazi ! Never again means now !"

Columbia now : "We're not sure how to do our protest against the Jews so we've asked this old lady with a history of antisemitism to help us"

That's actually her job

Fithian is a professional "protest consultant" who has been arrested over 80 times, Laura Ingraham of "The Ingraham Angle" said on her show Tuesday night.  Fithian has reportedly participated in protests on climate change, Occupy Wall Street, and now, the Free Palestine movement. After midnight Tuesday, Fithian was seen on video instructing a mob of anti-Israel agitators as they took over an academic building at Columbia University. In one video clip, protesters were seen carrying a table, while in the background, Fithian could be heard saying, "I can’t help with that. You guys can help with that."

That last bit, she knows how to not get arrested by staying hands off

In another clip, the mob was seen attaching a piece of furniture to the door of a building, while Fithian tells people with cameras to move back. During "The Ingraham Angle" on Tuesday evening, Ingraham spoke with Ira Stoll, the founder and editor of theeditors.com, about Fithian and what she gets out of helping to train the new generation of activists. "Some of the people involved are being paid money," Stoll said, explaining he authored an article for The Wall Street Journal recently about how these groups are advertising for fellows to be paid $3,000 to work eight hours a week for three months, on campuses across the U.S. "Some of the people who have been quite prominently in these protests have been paid fellows with hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Soros Open Society Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. "So, there’s big money behind these protests," Stoll added.

Never Again has been appropriated and is being used to attempt to shield people that have what Never Again is actually about in their founding charter.

These are people that have openly stated they'd like to get rid of every Jew everywhere and from what I've been seeing it seems that's not a uncommon viewpoint with several corners of the Islamic community

Not that the professional protestors actually care about the causes they push, otherwise we wouldn't be seeing people that screamed about a horn in a video game actually committing legitimate blood libel.

Professional protest coordinator I can actually get behind if they go in and make sure everything is done safe and legal, instructing on how to build barricades is not.

[littlesparklight]

I've never been the type to be the least fond of rationalized versions of Greek myth - not the ancient versions (of which there are several, and early, too; Herodotus is a case in point), and certainly not modern ones. What I didn't quite realize until recently was that, whenever I read some academic writing talking about the gods in an allegorized fashion (as natural phenomena or human passions) instead of being characters in their own right, that this wasn't just a development of the switch to Christianity. This strain of how to read/interpret/deal with, say, the Iliad (but also other epics or poems where the gods are characters in their own right) is just as ancient as the rationalized versions.

Which, that's Not My Thing either. I want the gods to be there in their own right, as actual characters and not just "humanized" allegory of natural phenomena and human passions.

It just wasn't until I was reading the first chapter of Denis Feeney's The Gods in Epic: Poets and Critics of the Classical Tradition, that I actually both got an understanding of that because he actually went through the development from the "beginning" so to speak. More to the point, it wasn't until that I understood why certain authors were talking of Helen and Aphrodite's confrontation in Book 3 of the Iliad as both Helen and the goddess having said confrontation but also Helen "simply" fighting against herself and with her own desires and in the end losing.

To be quick about it; on one end of the allegorizing spectrum there is the gods not as actual characters (but, because it's epic, being presented as actors), merely as their natural phenomena or human passions. Hence why some people say Athena isn't actually there, yanking of Achilles hair and arguing him into standing down in Book 1, but that this is only about Achilles himself and his reason winning out. Same, then, with those who say of Helen's confrontation that this is her fighting with herself only.

In the middle you have the stance that it is both the god as character and actor and as a (humanized) allegory of phenomena/passions. There you then get the tack I mentioned above, where Helen is both arguing with (and being maneuvered by) Aphrodite - and her own desires (and losing to both).

On the complete other end you of course have the stance that what we see is what there is; the god as character, acting in their own right and nothing more, implying nothing about the characters they're interacting with (or acting upon).

So when I read those articles I was always like "well if you say so but I don't see where this claim comes from /shrug". I didn't really dislike it since I certainly found the possibility of more proof of Helen's conflicted feelings/desires wrt Paris in my interest, lol. Not that reading Aphrodite as both goddess and allegory of Helen's own desires in that confrontation is the only proof; Helen's reaction to Aphrodite's attempted enticement/seduction when she describes Paris is proof enough (there is no "anger" in Helen's reaction, merely an ambiguous reaction that stirs her heart in her chest - one we're supposed to understand as erotic even before and ultimately because Aphrodite corners Helen into leaving, as G. S. Kirk in his commentary explains).

Understanding where that double way of reading the gods in epic came from helped with why these authors were talking that way about the Book 3 confrontation, of course. But it also got me willing to go along with such a double reading. I'm still never going to prefer something that tries to insist the gods aren't there in their own right, with their own actions and wants. It's just not interesting to me, at all.

But the double reading adds more than it takes away, to both the divine character and the human they might be interacting with in the moment.

I'll add two screencaps below to the cut.

First, one from Feeney's bok:

The second, from W.R. Johnson's Darkness Visible:

[vigorouslycoy]

funny anecdote about sociology and feminine body hair removal & why i think the field is in dire need of actual rigorous research on it:

several years back i read a book about misogyny, by a tenured sociology professor, published by one of the most prestigious academic presses in the world. there was a paragraph about body hair removal in which the author expressed what to me sounded nothing more than layperson level stale & unfounded assumptions about body hair removal: how it's unquestionably an oppressive practice, implying this view doesn't even warrant examining (there were no references to support the attitudes the author expressed).

she then proceeded to claim something like women are more likely to shave their body hair if they anticipate they are going to have sex with a male partner that day. again, this was uncritically presented as a mere anecdotal illustration of how bad and patriarchal the entire concept of body hair removal is. this time the claim had a reference listed. i was insanely curious about what kind of study that sweeping statement was from, so i went to check the source. it was a link to an online trash article, like something on par with Cosmopolitan but even worse. definitely not an academic resource.

i was disillusioned! how embarrassing that a sociologist would think she can get away with citing a bogus source on an academic publication just because she is making a statement that most people want to agree with because it's somehow seen as the correct view!

so ofc i emailed her. i asked about the source and if she could help me understand the background of the claim she was making; you see, not only was the source ofc utterly inappropriate to use in the first place, it also did not actually even contain the "information" to back her claim. so she replied to me and said something like "oh, it was from a survey i conducted on the participants of a women's studies class i tought".

like, girl wtf?? firstly, if that was the "source", why did you not cite that? cuz like. when you write academic text you... are supposed to refer to your sources accurately....? as a professor you know that, right?

secondly,,,, (and this is probably the answer to my first question lol) you are aware that that "survey" you did has absolutely zero reliability? if it was the students in your class, the data pool is way too small, there's an insane selection bias cuz it will be folks that are interested in the subject of your class, and also there will be pressure to give you a response you want to hear bc well, you are grading their performance. just to name a few issues.

anyway, i fear this is only the tip of the iceberg of the corners academics are happy to cut to disseminate their anti hair removal "feminist" views. and i don't think their colleagues notice any of it in most cases because well, who thinks to check a source of a sweeping statement about body hair removal? the answer is: no one but me. i'm literally the only sociologist out there that doesn't buy into the anti hair removal crap at face value.

there's actually very little legitimate research into the topic. and yet academics and laypeople alike all parrot the same misinformation in unison.

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Aaron Sibarium

Published: May 9, 2024

The school has declined to investigate faculty members for celebrating terrorism and calling for the destruction of Israel.

Yale University spent more than a year investigating a Jewish professor for six words of an op-ed he published in a pro-Israel newspaper, raising questions about the school’s approach to anti-Semitism and free speech as the campus continues to cope with the fallout of the Israel-Hamas war.

Evan Morris, a professor of biomedical engineering at Yale School of Medicine, penned the 2022 op-ed in the Algemeiner along with 14 other professors. They described a pattern of anti-Semitism in the Yale Postdoctoral Association, a group that runs social and academic events for researchers.

The authors listed several examples of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias. In one aside, they claimed that a researcher at the medical school, Azmi Ahmad, had "blocked an Israeli postdoc from speaking" at an October 2021 screening of a film about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Those six words triggered a marathon investigation by the medical school’s Office of Academic and Professional Development—a body responsible for disciplining professors for "unprofessional behavior"—that began in February 2023, over six months after the op-ed was published, and concluded in April 2024.

The office told Morris that it had been "tasked with assessing the accuracy" of the six-word statement, according to an email reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon. It did not tell him who filed the complaint, what policy he had allegedly violated, or what the consequences of that violation could be but said the review was likely to be completed by June 2023.

Instead, it dragged on without updates for over a year, according to Morris and emails reviewed by the Free Beacon. During that time—including in the post-October 7 era—Yale repeatedly declined to sanction students and professors for vicious anti-Israel speech, citing the importance of free expression.

The university took no action against Zareena Grewal, a professor of ethnicity, race, and migration, after she called October 7 "an extraordinary day" and stated that "settlers are not civilians." Nor did it investigate a Yale Law School student group that called for "armed struggle" against Israel and said that Hamas should be delisted as a terrorist organization.

"Yale is committed to freedom of expression," a university spokesperson, Karen Peart, said of Grewal’s remarks. "The comments posted on Professor Grewal’s personal accounts represent her own views."

By contrast, Morris earned a rebuke from the head of the university’s professional development office, Robert Rohrbaugh, who on April 11 shared the findings of the school’s investigation in an email.

"We were not able to substantiate the allegation that one postdoc was blocked from speaking by the postdoc identified in your article," Rohrbaugh said. "Our request to you for the future is that when attributing conduct to a named university community member, particularly a trainee, you be as diligent as possible to be sure information presented is accurate."

The protracted and seemingly selective probe has outraged Jewish faculty members, who say that the finger-wagging at Morris—and the decision to engage in it amid a nationwide surge in campus anti-Semitism—is tone deaf to say the least.

"Apparently, you have learned nothing from the last 6 months of rampant, unremitting and sometimes destructive and threatening anti-Semitism on campus,"  Morris wrote to Rohrbaugh. "Yale spends its resources and 2 years investigating 6 words in an OpEd by its faculty but fails to discipline professors who call for the annihilation of the Jewish people."

Pnina Weiss, a pediatrician at Yale Medical School who did not sign the 2022 op-ed but reviewed the correspondence between Morris and Rohrbaugh, said the investigation was  "hard to reconcile" with Yale’s stated commitment to free speech.

"The administration has defended the right of professors like Zareena Grewal to post on social media—celebrations of the rape, kidnapping, and cold-blooded murder of Israelis on October 7," she told the Free Beacon. "Yet when a group of 15 Jewish faculty write an op-ed about anti-Semitism and the suppression of an Israeli postdoc’s speech, the faculty are ‘investigated’ and reprimanded for misusing the word ‘block.’"

Double standards, Weiss continued, "are the cornerstone of anti-Semitism."

Aside from the verbal slap on the wrist, Yale has yet to formally sanction Morris, and the school declined to comment on its decision to single him out for investigation or say whether any other discipline remains on the table. In a statement on Rohrbaugh’s behalf, the university’s communications office said that the medical school was "not aware of any disciplinary action" against Morris, suggesting the rebuke in April was unofficial.

"Yale University and the School of Medicine vigorously reject anti-Semitism," the communications office said. "For example, the School of Medicine provides support for educational events on anti-Semitism organized by Dr. Morris through a grant from the Academic Engagement Network."

Ahmad, the postdoc named in the 2022 op-ed, did not respond to a request for comment.

The blowback to the investigation comes as Yale president Peter Salovey is preparing to submit testimony to Congress about the school’s handling of anti-Semitism, which, while less heavily criticized than Columbia’s, has generated its share of bad press.

Administrators stood by for days as protesters occupied a university plaza, defaced a World War II memorial, and harassed Jewish students who attempted to film the chaos, culminating in an April 20 confrontation that injured one student and prompted a sheepish apology from protest organizers. Additional encampments and occupations—one of which shut down a major intersection—sprung up sporadically in the following weeks.

Those disruptions followed a string of quieter scandals at the Ivy League university, where the campus aftershocks of Hamas’s assault fueled charges of hypocrisy and double standards. At Yale Law School, for example, the Schell Center for International Human Rights—which in 2022 spon.sored a talk on Israeli "apartheid"—resisted calls to host an event about Oct. 7, telling one Jewish student that the situation was "complex."

"What kind of 'Center for International Human Rights' would refuse to host an event condemning the largest pogrom since the Holocaust," Jewish students at the law school asked in an open letter. "Does the Schell Center not think that Israelis are entitled to human rights, too? Or is it perhaps because they were Jewish?"

The center only agreed to host an event after weeks of pressure, including from Jewish alumni. In the interim, several students posted defenses of the Oct. 7 massacre on a law school-wide listserv, which soon devolved into ad hominem back-and-forths.

"Expecting Palestinians to peacefully respond to unspeakable war crimes and illegal collective punishment they've experienced at the hands of Israel is laughable," Iesha Phillips, the lead editor of the Yale Journal of Law & Liberation, responded to one Jewish student. "Too many lives have been lost over the past few decades. We shouldn't only start to care because it's now affecting Jewish folks."

The law school’s hands-off approach to those posts contrasted sharply with its response to Trent Colbert, a second-year law student, when he invited students to his "traphouse" in 2021. Within hours of sending the invitation, Colbert was hauled into a meeting with school administrators who demanded he sign a pre-drafted apology and hinted he could face discipline—including consequences with the bar—if he refused.

They would later claim the encounter had been misconstrued. "We would never get on our letterhead and write anything to the bar about you," Yaseen Eldik, then the law school’s diversity director, told Colbert a month after their first meeting. "You may have been confused."

The backpedaling foreshadowed the tactics Yale used with Morris: launch an investigation, raise the possibility of discipline, then suggest after the fact that the probe’s target overreacted and imagined the threat.

"My prior communication did not question the right of faculty authors to voice their opinion or ask you to change your opinion," Rohrbaugh wrote in response to Morris’s message criticizing the investigation. "Although we found that one of the statements made about a trainee in a national media outlet could not be substantiated, my communication did not raise the topic of apology."

Rohrbaugh also chided Morris for declining to be interviewed as part of the investigation, after the school repeatedly refused to tell him what rule he’d been accused of breaking or who made the accusation, according to emails reviewed by the Free Beacon.

"Have I violated a Yale morality code?" Morris had asked Rohrbaugh in May 2023. "If so, where can I find it?"

He never heard back.

==

Never forget: the process is the punishment.

[measureformeasure]

@lesbiancassius' (very late) february reads

yes I will do this monthly now.

books (as it turns out, I was busy. one book)

Enter Ghost, Isabella Hammad - An actor, Sonia, returns to visit her sister Haneen in Haifa and gets caught up in playing Gertrude in a Hamlet production in the West Bank. Stellar.

short fiction & poetry

Why Don’t We Just Kill the Kid in the Omelas Hole, Isabel J. Kim - obsessed with this on title alone. It has such a feel to it in the way it moves that I envy.

Parthenogenesis, Piya Patel - horror that makes me want to peel out of my skin and/or get a hysterectomy.

Eschatology, Eve L. Ewing - poem that was circulating recently and God. Fuck, dude. Yeah. Yeah.

Ouroboros, Megan Xing - The to-do lists in this got me because I was having my little freak out before my show went up where you think you can fix everything with to-do lists. Also heavily feeling replacing ineffective psych meds with yogurt, a pickle, and two advil.

I also read Cancer Buffet by Mary Hannah Terzino and Soft Opening by Elle Nash, but I was tired and don’t remember them.

(some) articles

Who Was Barbie? (A Symposium), n+1 magazine - this cemented to me that I truly, truly do not care about Barbie or the Barbie movie and if I have to hear anything about it ever again I'm smashing a bowl on purpose

A bunch of Hera Lindsay Bird’s advice column, which is delightful.

Let’s talk about Goodreads, Nicole Brinkley. There are many days I am glad I do not want to pursue a career as solely an author of novels. Godspeed to the authors out there you're braver than I will ever be.

Saving a Life, Patricia Lockwood - my god I have got to read a Patricia Lockwood book, and also my god getting grievously ill on vacation is one of my greatest fears so this one made me a little bit crazy.

The Secret Life: On the poet Molly Brodak, Patricia Lockwood - again, my god, I need to read a Patricia Lockwood book.

A Final Checklist Before You Print up Your Play, Rick Roberts - this reminded me so much of Joshua McGuire’s Rules For Writing Libretto, which I think of a lot.

“I think the word is dignity” — Rachel Corrie’s Letters from Gaza — I don’t know what to say. Read these if you can. They’re striking.

The Sexual Status of Aeschylus’ Cassandra, Paula Debnar - I can put an academic paper here you're not the boss of me. why I opened this one I don't remember but I was fervently texting friends in the middle of a certainly unrelated class about it because I've never been normal about Kassandra and Klytemnestra and I'm not going to start now.

tv/movies

Rewatching Severance, slowly.

Rewatching Sort Of, less slowly - this is probably niche to non-Canadian readers but it is a very good show.

Watched The Prince, which was a long time coming, and then wrote a paper about it. Bless.

tbr/nightstand

in the midst of Salvage the Bones, which is of course very good

Helen of Troy: from Homer to Hollywood

I'm gonna be rereading like every play off my Shakespeare class syllabus for the final which I wish I was more excited about

[mariacallous]

Whether you're a student, a journalist, or a business professional, knowing how to do high-quality research and writing using trustworthy data and sources, without giving in to the temptation of AI or ChatGPT, is a skill worth developing.

As I detail in my book Writing That Gets Noticed, locating credible databases and sources and accurately vetting information can be the difference between turning a story around quickly or getting stuck with outdated information.

For example, several years ago the editor of Parents.com asked for a hot-take reaction to country singer Carrie Underwood saying that, because she was 35, she had missed her chance at having another baby. Since I had written about getting pregnant in my forties, I knew that as long as I updated my facts and figures, and included supportive and relevant peer-reviewed research, I could pull off this story. And I did.

The story ran later that day, and it led to other assignments. Here are some tips I’ve learned that you should consider mastering before you turn to automated tools like generative AI to handle your writing work for you.

Find Statistics From Primary Sources

Identify experts, peer-reviewed research study authors, and sources who can speak with authority—and ideally, offer easily understood sound bites or statistics on the topic of your work. Great sources include professors at major universities and media spokespeople at associations and organizations.

For example, writer and author William Dameron pinned his recent essay in HuffPost Personal around a statistic from the American Heart Association on how LGBTQ people experience higher rates of heart disease based on discrimination. Although he first found the link in a secondary source (an article in The New York Times), he made sure that he checked the primary source: the original study that the American Heart Association gleaned the statistic from. He verified the information, as should any writer, because anytime a statistic is cited in a secondary source, errors can be introduced.

Dive Into Databases

Jen Malia, author of The Infinity Rainbow Club series of children’s books (whom I recently interviewed on my podcast), recently wrote a piece about dinosaur-bone hunting for Business Insider, which she covers in her book Violet and the Jurassic Land Exhibit.

After a visit to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Malia, whose books are set in Philadelphia, found multiple resources online and on the museum site that gave her the history of the Bone Wars, information on the exhibits she saw, and the scientific names of the dinosaurs she was inspired by. She also used the Library of Congress’ website, which offers digital collections and links to the Library of Congress Newspaper Collection.

Malia is a fan of searching for additional resources and citable documents with Google Scholar. “If I find that a secondary source mentions a newspaper article, I’m going to go to the original newspaper article, instead of just stopping there and quoting,” she says.

Your local public library is a great source of free information, journals, and databases (even ones that generally require a subscription and include embargoed research). For example, your search should include everything from health databases (Sage Journals, Scopus, PubMed) to databases for academic sources and journalism (American Periodical Series Online, Statista, Academic Search Premier) and databases for news, trends, market research, and polls (the Harris Poll, Pew Research Center, Newsbank, ProPublica).

Even if you find a study or paper that you can’t access in one of those databases, consider reaching out to the study’s lead author or researcher. In many cases, they’re happy to discuss their work and may even share the study with you directly and offer to talk about their research.

Get a Good Filtering System

For journalist Paulette Perhach’s article on ADHD in The New York Times, she used Epic Research to see “dual team studies.” That's when two independent teams address the same topic or question, and ideally come to the same conclusions. She recommends locating research and experts via key associations for your topic. She also likes searching via Google Scholar but advises filtering it for studies and research in recent years to avoid using old data. She suggests keeping your links and research organized. “Always be ready to be peer-reviewed yourself,” Perhach says.

When you are looking for information for a story or project, you might be inclined to start with a regular Google search. But keep in mind that the internet is full of false information, and websites that look trustworthy can sometimes turn out to be businesses or companies with a vested interest in you taking their word as objective fact without additional scrutiny. Regardless of your writing project, unreliable or biased sources are a great way to torpedo your work—and any hope of future work.

For Accuracy, Go to the Government

Author Bobbi Rebell researched her book Launching Financial Grownups using the IRS’ website. “I might say that you can contribute a certain amount to a 401K, but it might be outdated because those numbers are always changing, and it’s important to be accurate,” she says. “AI and ChatGPT can be great for idea generation,” says Rebell, “but you have to be careful. If you are using an article someone was quoted in, you don’t know if they were misquoted or quoted out of context.”

If you use AI and ChatGPT for sourcing, you not only risk introducing errors, you risk introducing plagiarism—there is a reason OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is being sued for downloading information from all those books.

Historically, the Loudest Isn’t the Best

Audrey Clare Farley, who writes historical nonfiction, has used a plethora of sites for historical research, including Women Also Know History, which allows searches by expertise or area of study, and JSTOR, a digital library database that offers a number of free downloads a month. She also uses Chronicling America, a project from the Library of Congress which gathers old newspapers to show how a historical event was reported, and Newspapers.com (which you can access via free trial but requires a subscription after seven days).

When it comes to finding experts, Farley cautions against choosing the loudest voices on social media platforms. “They might not necessarily be the most authoritative. I vet them by checking if they have a history of publication on the topic, and/or educational credentials.”

When vetting an expert, look for these red flags:

You can’t find their work published or cited anywhere.

They were published in an obscure journal.

Their research is funded by a company, not a university, or they are the spokesperson for the company they are doing research for. (This makes them a public relations vehicle and not an appropriate source for journalism.)

And finally, the best endings for virtually any writing, whether it’s an essay, a research paper, an academic report, or a piece of investigative journalism, circle back to the beginning of the piece, and show your reader the transformation or the journey the piece has presented in perspective.

As always, your goal should be strong writing supported by research that makes an impact without cutting corners. Only then can you explore tools that might make the job a little easier, for instance by generating subheads or discovering a concept you might be missing—because then you'll have the experience and skills to see whether it's harming or helping your work.

[humanrightsupdates]

Hong Kong: Quash Baseless Convictions of Activists

(New York) – The Hong Kong government should immediately quash a court’s groundless national security law convictions of prominent pro-democracy activists, Human Rights Watch said today.

On May 30, 2024, three judges handpicked by the Beijing-controlled Hong Kong chief executive convicted 14 activists and former elected lawmakers under the draconian National Security Law. Two were acquitted. Earlier, 31 other defendants had pleaded guilty in hopes of more lenient sentencing. The court will announce sentences, which could amount to life in prison, at a future date.

“Hong Kong’s mass show trial lays bare Beijing’s utter contempt for fundamental freedoms and democratic political processes,” said Maya Wang, acting China director at Human Rights Watch. “The Hong Kong government needs to quash the convictions of these activists and fulfill its legal obligations to protect the rights of the Hong Kong people, including their right to freely elect their government.”

In Hong Kong’s largest national security case, the authorities charged the 47 democracy activists across several generations with “conspiracy to commit subversion” under article 22 of the National Security Law. Those accused included former lawmakers, protest leaders, labor organizers, and academics ranging in age from 26 to 68. Many have been in pretrial detention since their arrests more than three years ago, in January 2021.

[thelingodingo]

Japan's & Korea's Upper/Underclassmen Culture

NOTE: for the ease of writing, i've combined the 2 countries together for this post. but in no means am I saying the hierarchy structure is the exact same in these two cultures. of course, there are differences between the countries. this post is talking about the aspects that are actually the same/similar.

In Japanese, you may have already heard of the terms senpai and kohai.

In Korean, you may have already heard of the terms sunbae and hubae.

Both the Japanese senpai/kohai and the Korean sunbae/hubae work virtually the same and come from the Chinese xianbei (先輩/先辈) and houbei (後輩/后辈). They are used to address people with more experience/higher level. In a school setting, you would use these terms to students in the older grades. In a work setting, you would use these terms towards co-workers who've worked at the company longer than you. These terms would also be used in clubs, associations, sports, and organizations in the same way.

The concept of this hierarchy stems largely from Confucianism, which spread from China and heavily influenced the culture and ideologies of Korea and Japan as well. The Confucian philosophies are still quite prevalent in East Asia today (especially Korea) and shaped how these upperclassmen/underclassmen relationships work.

These terms are part of a vertical/command hierarchy, meaning that underclassmen are expected to respect and follow the authority of the upperclassmen. To many people not used to this culture, it may seem like a horrible and controlling concept (which is definitely true in many ways). But it also has many positive aspects which is why it's still widely used in East Asia today.

The upperclassmen have the role of being responsible leaders that underclassmen look up to. A good senpai/sunbae might treat their kohai/hubae to dinner, teach them life skills and lessons, guide their underclassmen through challenges, and show them new experiences.

On the other hand, a kohai/hubae has the opportunity to admire more skilled individuals and learn how to show traits such as gratitude and loyalty as well as having their own responsibilities. For example, in a school setting, it is the kohai's/hubae's job to complete basic tasks such as cleaning instead of their upperclassmen.

As mentioned before, there are ways that this relationship system is abused. It's not uncommon for senpais/sunbaes to be severely abusive towards their kohai/hubae by taking advantage of the system's teachings of how underclassmen should be obedient and submissive towards their upperclassmen. Because of this, the senpai/kohai system hasn't been as rigid and harsh as it was in the past in Japan.

However, in Korea, there hasn't been as radical of a change. As far as I'm aware from interactions with other Korean, Japanese, and Chinese people- even some Chinese and Japanese people get shocked at how extreme the ideologies of Confucianism in Korea still is today.

A reason for this may be because of the status-quo and cyclical form the upperclassmen/underclassmen culture has. Everybody has been a hubae before, and everybody will be a sunbae. People who experienced unfair treament by their sunbaes when they were hubaes may think that once they become a sunbae they should treat their own hubaes the same way to make up for the past pain.

Ultimately, theres probably hundreds of academic articles out there that go into this concept way deeper but I just wanted to talk about the basics of what this system is truly like.

If there are any mistakes/inaccuracies please feel free to tell me as I'm half asleep and this post isn't proofread.