The common thread here is a myth. It goes like this: “cool and in touch guy applies cutting edge trend to business, makes bank, reshapes world.” But these VCs are neither cool nor in touch.

ประเทศกูมี

Deinonychus - cooler than Velociraptor but somehow lost the fame game because of some movie somewhere.

It has been said, but 4 year old me needs to say it again - pterodactyls are not dinosaurs.

ALERT!! Min Aung Hlaing made March 2026 the most murderous month in #Myanmar #Burma!

His army killed 518 people – the biggest number of civilians & non-combatants killed in one month since the coup began in Feb. 2021

Families across the U.S. are getting college acceptance letters — and tuition bills NPR's Ayesha Rascoe speaks with economist Judith Scott-Clayton about the cost of college in the U.S. They discuss the difference between sticker and net price and the opaqueness of tuition costs.

To give a concrete example: California paid for 70% of the UC budget and 90% of the CSU budget until the 1980s; now it’s down to roughly 10% and 40% rsp. Students pay most of the difference.

One has to get paid a lot of money, as an ed economist, to not know this

www.npr.org/2026/04/12/n...

Thinking of the Central European University: will the new government revive its programmes, reinstall my colleagues and have them return from campuses in exile? Will it bring back all students, including scholars at risk who were part of a great programme there? Orbán ended all that! #IStandWithCEU

Orban, Beacon to the Right, Concedes Defeat in Hungary’s Election

🇭🇺

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/w...

True true - humanism is humanist after all! I was just thinking reading this piece how Americans so often juxtapose atheism with Christianity, when there are so many other ways of imagining.

Opinion | ‘A Light That’s Both Historical and Eternal’

We don’t have to juxtapose a heartless materialist atheism with Christianity, though. There are plenty of traditions which do not have a single all-powerful and all-good deity behind the scenes that do account for the value beauty and kindness and something beyond.

www.nytimes.com/2026/04/12/o...

Hackers were noble rogues.
Sex was potentially catastrophic.
Utopia and dystopia were just around the corner.
Selling out art for money was the worst sin.
You just showed up at your local club and saw whoever was playing, hung out with whoever was there.

This was my favorite fighting game of the 90s. Tension, tension, tension, SLASH, done

When it rains, it floods (and sometimes it floods without rain). Latest publication just out: a chapter critically examining conceptions of local, indigenous and expert knowledge on the Mekong in the edited volume "Fluid Phenomena".

brill.com/display/titl...

Right, but I’m not sure that a speech by Kirk etc would be “information.” There’s nothing new, rather, it’s an affirmation of presence, entertainment, a kind of festival saying “we are here.”
And a pipeline to take college funds and ship it to PACs.

I remember hearing of these requests when I was teaching in the US. Grifters like Shapiro or Kirk were often rejected not because of controversy, but because they charged 100x what an academic would get for a speaking fee. Not booking them was not censorship, but simply budget.

You would think that a military able to find one downed airman hiding in a crevice could also identify 170 girls at school as not being soldiers.

I’ll post again on this in a few months, but next year I’ve got two articles that will be coming out: one on haunting in Cultural Anthropology and the other on gender and performance in Journal of Asian Studies!

Trump Slashed Science Funding. Now the U.S. Could Face a Costly Brain Drain.

So. I’m on the other side of this. Yes, salaries are pretty low. Yes, there’s bureaucracy. But the students are good, institutions are research focused, colleagues are great, and life isn’t that expensive - imagine no healthcare bills, no car bills, etc. www.nytimes.com/2026/04/04/b...

I’m sorry for your loss

You should get paid for publications, and for reviewing publications.

a tumblr post with a user named bvckbiter writing "is this character good or bad" "is this shop unproblematic or not" "is this arc deserving of redemption or not" girl... underneath it is a screenshot from the show shōgun of a character saying "i don't have time for this christian nonsense"

How I feel reading 99% of art and media critique these days

But this is the heart of what we’ve been losing for years: slowness. Time. Reading whole books, taking walks without a phone dinging or going off. A loss of nuance and an embrace of always doing things, always on - this led us to the sinking of the titanic!

Water Powers: Sacred Aquatic Animals of the Asia-Pacific Water Powers is an interdisciplinary collection that presents timely, original research on sacred aquatic animals—from dragons and nagas to crocodiles, eels, dugongs, and whales—and environmental c…

Hey everyone! New chapter in an edited volume from University of Hawaii Press!

uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/water-...

(I love your content, by the way - I'm another anthropologist, but also my maternal grandfather used to make custom stocks as a side job up in the [arguably] northern edge of Appalachia, near Williamsport, PA. Made two beautiful muskets from barrels he found hunting).

This post and another made a synchronicity on my feed!

The Ultima IV end screen told me to tell you of my achievement forty years ago. So here I am, finally doing it.

Waffles has a good time

The Mekong: A confluence of power, survival, and change Date16 March 2026 Time 10:00 am to 12:00 pm (Online UK time) 17:00 t0 19:00 (In person Thailand time at Chulalongkorn University

celebrate the strength and spirit of Myanmar’s fight for democracy and hope in a powerful documentary screening and conversation. Join us at Leichhardt Town Hall for “Voices of Resistance: Remember Myanmar”, a powerful gathering to mark five years since the Myanmar military coup and to honour the resilience and courage of Myanmar’s people. Hosted by English As Anything, Mohinga Hub, and the Sydney Myanmar community, the evening will bring together film, music, and community conversation to keep Myanmar’s stories visible and connected. We’ll screen Voices of Resistance, a documentary sharing stories of exile, courage, solidarity, and resilience from Myanmar, alongside resistance songs and community performances with the Singing for All Choir and the Myanmar community. A panel discussion will follow, featuring Patrick Burgess, Sean Turnell, Noor Azizah, San May Thu, and Ko Ko Aung, moderated by Tasneem Roc. Event details Tuesday, 17 March 2026 6:00–8:45pm Leichhardt Town Hall (corner of Marion & Norton St, Leichhardt NSW 2040) Free entry

Mon:
The Mekong Studies Centre & more hold seminar "The Mekong: A confluence of power, survival, and change" in Bangkok & online

Tue:
The Movement - Resilient Burma Collective hold:
“Remember Myanmar: Resistance. Resilience. Hope” solidarity event! In Sydney
5/

“Any society… which opens its doors to money sooner or later loses its acquired equilibria and liberates forces that can never afterwards be adequately controlled. The new form of interchange disturbs the old order, benefits a few privileged individuals and hurts everyone else.”

- Fernand Braudel

Photograph of Habermas (bust), wearing brown jacket, tie, white shirt and white hair, with a glass of water in front of him.

Jürgen Habermas (18 June 1929 – 14 March 2026).

Significantly, this is a game about scrappy humans shooting down robotic drones.