David Ambaras
@borderlander62.bsky.social
Historian. Author, Japan's Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters At the Borders of Empire (2018), Bad Youth: Juvenile Delinquency and the Politics of Everyday Life in Modern Japan (2006). Co-director, https://bodiesandstructures.org. Also shitposts.
"One day, lad, all this will be yours"
November 22, 2025 at 1:54 AM
"One day, lad, all this will be yours"
Where to begin
November 17, 2025 at 3:41 PM
Where to begin
These two developments strike me as connected. Get your own god slop, make your own art slop.
November 15, 2025 at 1:25 AM
These two developments strike me as connected. Get your own god slop, make your own art slop.
Show me the difference
November 6, 2025 at 5:29 PM
Show me the difference
The American electorate tonight
November 5, 2025 at 1:46 AM
The American electorate tonight
New remaster of Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic just dropped
November 4, 2025 at 2:51 AM
New remaster of Steely Dan's Pretzel Logic just dropped
Just going to leave this here
November 4, 2025 at 1:37 AM
Just going to leave this here
This today from NC State Senator @graigmeyer.bsky.social speaks directly to your point: "I decided to try an approach where I could care for people on the ground, build community, and garner political support all at the same time.... a network of 17 Little Free Libraries across Caswell County."
November 3, 2025 at 3:11 AM
This today from NC State Senator @graigmeyer.bsky.social speaks directly to your point: "I decided to try an approach where I could care for people on the ground, build community, and garner political support all at the same time.... a network of 17 Little Free Libraries across Caswell County."
This is more than just grifting. This is encouraging people's despair and profiting off it.
November 3, 2025 at 12:45 AM
This is more than just grifting. This is encouraging people's despair and profiting off it.
This is some of the cheesiest grifting I've ever seen
November 1, 2025 at 12:27 AM
This is some of the cheesiest grifting I've ever seen
From the NYT, 2013-03-01:
October 30, 2025 at 5:53 PM
From the NYT, 2013-03-01:
"Also, please recruit 10 of your friends to join my venture and you will get a percentage. And if they each recruit 10 people, you will move up a rank in the operation"
October 27, 2025 at 11:36 PM
"Also, please recruit 10 of your friends to join my venture and you will get a percentage. And if they each recruit 10 people, you will move up a rank in the operation"
Hey everyone, Toys R Us is back in business for this one-time only (until next time) sale on knock-off action figures from the 90s
October 27, 2025 at 5:38 PM
Hey everyone, Toys R Us is back in business for this one-time only (until next time) sale on knock-off action figures from the 90s
RIP Byron Marshall. Paul Barclay's tribute shows the relevance of his scholarship to today's politics of #highered and how university administrators seeking to avoid state intervention must not capitulate preemptively.
![At the same time, Byron believed that the ideas expressed by leaders, of various stripes, were important. Each of his four major monographs testify to his penchant for locating that place where, as he would say, “the rubber hit the road” at the intersection of thought and social action. His Academic Freedom and the Japanese Imperial University, 1868–1939 (University of California Press, 1992) examined the collapse of institutional and informal protections for free speech in prewar Japan. As in his first book, Byron avoided recourse to simple answers (i.e., that fascism prohibited freedom). His conclusion was both startling and prescient: Tokyo University’s leadership and professorate, and not outside forces, defanged its faculty in the late 1920s and 1930s by repressing student dissenters and firing heretical (Marxist) teachers to maintain the university’s institutional autonomy and stave off government control. Seeing similarities between then and now, Byron recently sent an op-ed to the Minnesota Star Tribune warning that “[today’s university] administrators must stop capitulating to … funding blackmail and protect the exercise of free speech and debate … The alternative is endorsing forms of censorship which are anathema to an open society.”](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:x4kktl5xuiton3ixzolhiod7/bafkreifjazvprqjhidralhtweeiio6uvplwsvojsmlxinpxf6ezsufm4ju@jpeg)
October 23, 2025 at 2:19 PM
RIP Byron Marshall. Paul Barclay's tribute shows the relevance of his scholarship to today's politics of #highered and how university administrators seeking to avoid state intervention must not capitulate preemptively.
As a former fellow I feel sick
October 21, 2025 at 9:27 PM
As a former fellow I feel sick
Think it's another day where we need reminding that in this house, we
October 21, 2025 at 9:06 PM
Think it's another day where we need reminding that in this house, we
Get off our couch, mthrfckrs
October 19, 2025 at 5:45 PM
Get off our couch, mthrfckrs
NC State Senator Graig Meyer bringing the fire to Carrboro #NoKings. Talking about building nonviolent mass noncooperation, support for independent media, and alternative economic activities to undercut the corporations that fund authoritarianism -- bringing back a democratic America!
October 18, 2025 at 8:17 PM
NC State Senator Graig Meyer bringing the fire to Carrboro #NoKings. Talking about building nonviolent mass noncooperation, support for independent media, and alternative economic activities to undercut the corporations that fund authoritarianism -- bringing back a democratic America!