stella
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anthrostella.bsky.social
stella
@anthrostella.bsky.social
🍉 anthropologist of environment/Japan 🌈
📚 phd social anthro @ SOAS, researching impact of climate change on experiences of the seasons in Tokyo
🇬🇧 back in London
Pinned
Forgot hashtags - not in the Bluesky headspace yet clearly! #PhDLife #AcademicSky #AnthroSky #Anthropology
Ok, after the latest Musk shenanigans I am well and truly DONE with X.

Any social anthropologists out there in the sky? Hi, I'm Stella, a PhD anthro student at SOAS, currently on fieldwork looking at how people's experiences of the seasons in Tokyo are being affected by climate change 🌸🌿
Interviews, interviews, all the interviews. Two today, one on Monday, one last Saturday. They were good but man are they tiring! #anthrosky #PhDsky
March 12, 2025 at 3:17 PM
It turns out these are Kanhi-zakura, which is why they bloomed a good few weeks before the rest of the Kawazu-zakura. It's hard to keep up with all the varieties!
Kawazu-zakura yesterday 🌸 Ebara Shrine, Shinagawa
March 11, 2025 at 10:12 AM
The powers that be at JR East have changed all the Yamanote Line departure melodies to the same song. I'm officially declaring a week of mourning for one of the true simple joys of being a Tokyo resident :(
February 23, 2025 at 2:59 PM
Strange day today. I had to press the emergency button at a level crossing this morning (an obaasan fell out her wheelchair). Equal parts intriguing and terrifying, thankfully everyone was fine.

Also Sam Fender released a new album, which gets a big thumbs up from me. TV Dinner is a great track
February 21, 2025 at 8:28 AM
This week I've been spending time out in the cold with the plum blossoms. I also scheduled in some interviews which I'm excited about!
February 19, 2025 at 3:08 PM
Kawazu-zakura yesterday 🌸 Ebara Shrine, Shinagawa
February 14, 2025 at 12:15 AM
Viscerally experienced the seasons today, with the cold blast Japan is experiencing giving my poor hands some very chapped skin 🥶 something something embodiment
February 7, 2025 at 3:02 PM
Successful day today - discovered a nice local library (and got a library card!), went climbing, and joined a photo walk to get some cool edgy photos of Shibuya at night. Time for bed!
February 7, 2025 at 2:15 PM
I can't lie I'm really disappointed and angry that Starmer is just rolling over and acquiescing to the fascists in the US. They go against everything Labour stands for and you're happy to just sit there, offering only weak words? And just nothingness towards the rise of the far right in the UK. Ugh.
February 7, 2025 at 12:02 AM
Re: this, seems it was done to make this report by Ted Cruz's office singling out 'woke' grants. Of ~32,000 grants, ~29,000 contain at least one of these words, they had to narrow it down further using some... sus methodology

Chilling

#AcademicSky #PhDSky

www.commerce.senate.gov/services/fil...
February 5, 2025 at 11:18 PM
Reposted by stella
Dorothy B. Porter changed libraries 💜

The Dewey Decimal System used to only have two classifications for Black people: 325 (colonization) & 326 (slavery). Each book by a Black person was put into one of these classifications. A book of poetry? Classified as colonization.

Enter Dorothy B. Porter 🧵
February 3, 2025 at 3:47 PM
Time for us all to use as many of these words as possible to gum up the censorship tree

Either that or by omitting these words they delete the whole of anthropology, I guess, since we can't use the word 'sociocultural' or 'multicultural' or 'cultural differences' or 'women' or, or....
🚨BREAKING. From a program officer at the National Science Foundation, a list of keywords that can cause a grant to be pulled. I will be sharing screenshots of these keywords along with a decision tree. Please share widely. This is a crisis for academic freedom & science.
February 4, 2025 at 2:59 PM
At what point do we start a BDS campaign against the US? I'm serious.
February 3, 2025 at 2:55 PM
Reposted by stella
If you aren't motivated by hope, that's fine. Other people are, though, so don't bring them down to your level.

Keep your fatalistic nihilism to yourself, because we can't afford to discourage action at a time like this.
February 3, 2025 at 1:22 PM
Reposted by stella
i’m just photoshopping muppets onto the cover of vanity fair: thread
February 1, 2025 at 4:20 PM
I really appreciate this piece, the call to *action* in our own ways (not just naming what's bad) and making the left a welcoming warm space are standout points for me. Also an international perspective, finally. Thanks for writing!
February 2, 2025 at 1:21 AM
I kinda wish this platform was less American-centric. I know it must be rough being in the US right now. But struggling to see how being here is useful, as someone with zero personal ties to the US, as everything I'm getting is about the current US situation + nothing else. Any tips?
February 1, 2025 at 2:42 PM
Found this today and it made me smile. The indieweb lives! www.cameronsworld.net
January 31, 2025 at 3:31 PM
First interview of the PhD is done ✅ 🎉

Many many more to go but it was good to get started!

#PhDSky
January 31, 2025 at 8:50 AM
Ironic that this is behind a paywall, but good news for those of us funded by UKRI... now raise stipends for everybody!
Thousands of UK-based PhD students will benefit from the largest real-terms stipend rise in two decades after Britain’s main research funder unveiled an 8 per cent increase to annual payments

#AcademicSky #EduSky
Record rise in UKRI PhD stipend hailed as ‘major win’
Unprecedented hike in UK Research and Innovation minimum PhD stipend will seek to place it in line with national living wage
www.timeshighereducation.com
January 30, 2025 at 3:36 PM
Today on fieldwork: the very beginnings of the plum blossoms 🌸 reserving judgement on whether they're early because only a few select varieties were in bloom and I need to look them up. Most trees were in bud! #AnthroSky #Anthropology #AcademicSky
January 29, 2025 at 10:53 AM
Karma 💥
After stealing copyrighted works for #llm #ai training from journalists, writers and everybody else who produces text for years in what amounts to probably the biggest thefts of such works in history, #openai now complains that #deepseek might have used its “intellectual property”.
January 29, 2025 at 10:35 AM
Reposted by stella
1/ Some thoughts on Japan's wartime personal newsletters (個人雑誌), the Substacks of their times.

One of the more clever ways leftists in Japan adapted to censorship was to publish these newsletters, which were small enough in circulation to escape outright bans

Consider, eg, Ubukata Toshirō's 故人今人
January 29, 2025 at 5:46 AM
Inside me there are two wolves:

- the British part of me which is screaming come on girl get outside it's sunny! the sun might not be there tomorrow! make the most of it!!!

- the Kanto part of me which knows it's been sunny every day for weeks now + also feels embarrassed to be outside w/a cold 😷
January 29, 2025 at 1:24 AM
I was supposed to do the first interview of my PhD project today, but I've woken up with no voice 😅 thanks body!
January 29, 2025 at 12:57 AM