Mikko Toivanen

LLMs are, among other things, a convenient feint to distract people from thinking things could be better.

Not sure if Netflix would get on board with a full-on "meat is murder" family film. Maybe, maybe not.

Actually, reading your comments reminded me of my specific problem with Okja, which was that *in theory* it wants to make a point about all industrial animal farming, but in practice does not acknowledge real animals at all, replacing them with CGI instead. I don't know if I'm fair about that!

I think I felt this, too. I found it difficult to really enjoy it even though in theory it's pieced together from a lot of ingredients that, individually, I like. I liked Snowpiercer! And that's probably the shallower of the two films.

We have a zine! Over the past year, I've been working w/ Pusat Sejarah Rakyat and the International Institute of Social History to bring together organisations around Southeast Asia working on archiving and disseminating "people's histories" and the histories of social movements in the region. 1/4

Forthcoming Edited Volume: Imagining the Anti-Fascist City: Contested Geographies of Resistance and Solidarity In June 2025, the University of Helsinki’s Locating Global Protest (LGP) project team (PI: Kasper Braskén; postdoctoral researchers: Moshumee Dewoo and Shane Little) hosted the conference “Imaginin…

Project news! We have secured a book contract with Brill's Historical Materialism book series for the "Imagining the Antifascist City" edited volume. Check out the announcement below👇 helsinkinotebooks.com/2026/03/02/f...

Picture of women on a beach John Leech, ‘The mermaids' haunt’. The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1854 - 1869. The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs. Picture Collection, The New York Public Library.

Call for Papers: Women’s Fieldwork and the Making of Nineteenth Century Natural History Collections
We seek articles to complete a special issue on women’s field collecting, and contributions to nineteenth century natural history for Nuncius.
#Histsci #NaturalHistory #WomensHistory #Fieldwork

The Raskolnikov principle, as I call it.

I revived my hobby of posting snippets of overheard conversations in public space. This was something I really enjoyed, wonder what happened (oh right, covid happened).

Very much enjoyed doing this video interview about my article! Thanks to @erikahanna.bsky.social and @urbanhistory.bsky.social for the opportunity. Hopefully of interest to colleagues across urban history and environmental humanities #UrbanHist #UrbanStudies #EnviroHums #CoastalHist

Linguists/phonologists! Help sought:

I'm trying to make sense of some interesting transcription errors (from lectures on racial theory in eighteenth-century German).

Which textbooks, handbooks, etc. best cover processes by which sounds become confused when listening to continuous speech?

yes I was like "oh okay that's a sail. but wait, that's also a sail? how many kinds of sails do they need?"

this would have been a useful service a decade ago when I had promised to translate a manuscript from the dutch, little realising there was a section that listed in great detail all the parts of a ship that I did not know the names of in any language at all

ouch, flashback to when I was a student and this went on for a month at a hotel construction site next door. hope yours finishes sooner!

like the akashic records?

Specific to a certain range of topics but Leiden University Digital Collections are a treasure trove and all free to use where out of copyright.

Maybe St. George's in Prenzl.B., they're generally happy to order most things?

Sakura River Neo, by Clams 6 track album

6. Clams - Sakura River: Another EP and this might be the best of all? Summery wistful guitar pop with slight fuzz and an infectious vibe, hard to think of any defects. Keeps it tight. A classic of the millennium era with all the optimism of that time now irrevocably lost. 5/5

little do the scammers realise that academia places no value on actual readerships

Yes, are you telling me it wasn't an exclusive invitation just for me :(

Got a new type of academic spam mail that's just 12 paragraphs of LLM-generated waffle about how my work deserves to reach a wider readership, sadly they lost me with the frankly unconvincing opening: "People say this is the year they will finally understand colonial history".

the only right-wing pm I could get behind

Enjoying watching the curling with a commentator who clearly doesn't know much about the sport. After every shot there's a short pause as he waits for a reaction to figure out how it went and then he's like "and... the players do not appear to be satisfied with that."

Urban Twilight, by Oeil 5 track album

5. Oeil - Urban Twilight: This EP has a pretty legendary reputation and well deserved, too! Even if (again) it's primarily the opener Strawberry Cream that will catch your attention. Excellent shoegaze, great vocal harmonies, further proof that the EP length is ideal for this kind of music. 4.5/5

4. cruyff in the bedroom - ukiyogunjou: A fairly pop take on shoegaze, not bad but really the band name is more memorable than the music. Apparently pretty much the only band on the list that's actually had a proper sustained career? Not on bandcamp. 2.5/5.

blaze down his way like the space show, by burrrn 10 track album

3. burrrn - blaze down his way like the space show: Great title, actual shoegaze! (whatever the merits of that label) Goes in hard but then develops a more woozy, meditative sound in its back half that works better. A weirdly tinny sound mix that may or may not be deliberate. Highlight 'fog'. 3.5/5.

Mazzucchelli is so good on this run, arguably more important to the whole than Miller.

luminousorangesuperplastic, by Luminous Orange 6 track album

2. Luminous Orange - luminousorangesuperplastic: Short at 25 mins but probably about ideal length for its high-energy off-tune guitar sound. It's all good but the incredible opener walkblind, surely one of the best tracks of the 90s, completely overshadows the rest. 4/5 overall, 7/5 for walkblind.

Glitter, by Pasteboard 13 track album

1. Pasteboard - Glitter: This only has the barest hint of shoegazy haze on some tracks, it's sort of mellow lowkey wistful slacker pop with naivist, hypnotically repetitive guitars. A mood album, you'll struggle to remember individual tracks. The mood is totally my jam, though. 4/5.

(disclaimer: I'm a fundamentalist albums person so my playlists are just one album after another, which makes them pretty useless for most playlist situations)