Eike Exner

Gonna use this opportunity to once more plug my article on the fascinating 19th century origins of this revolutionary form of narration-less visual storytelling seen here (which then became the foundation of most of today's comics, across the globe):

seika.repo.nii.ac.jp/record/20001...

Even as a cynical scholar of rape culture, I'm shocked that this isn't the headline story on domestic politics everywhere right now. It's just an unfathomable abuse of power, in clear violation of the law.

They want the labor, just not the people providing it :-)

I guess the LDP dream is to import as many workers as possible (for low wage jobs) while also making it prohibitively expensive for them to gain residency or citizenship, so that they have to leave once they're no longer employed.

It's like exempting tourists from sales tax to attract more of them and then whining about there being too many tourists, except in reverse, I guess. Complaining about labor shortages and then signaling to people not to come live and work in Japan. Tourists only, please.

You know what would promote an orderly coexistence? Enforcing parking laws against the wealthy aholes seizing public space with their illegally parked G-Wagons. Just a thought, but then again those are the LDP's true base, so I guess xenophobic agitation is all we get.

By spreading the lie that immigrants are a burden and simultaneously acting antagonistically and openly extractively towards immigrants, policies like these do the exact opposite of "promoting an orderly coexistence."

That immigrants cause extra costs is such an insidious right-wing lie. Most immigrants are raised and educated abroad, then pay taxes and contribute economically in their new country, and are often excluded from care/pensions (or sent back) after they are no longer an economic net benefit.

Japan's already fingerprinting all foreigners as potential criminals, are we charging a cover fee to enter the country like Americans do next? Nipponjin First rah rah!!

US government: seems to want to exploit foreigners as much as possible, fundamentally antagonistic

Japan government: charges only a nominal fee, seems capable and reasonable

Does every dumb selfish race-to-the-bottom BS from the US have to spread to other countries? I don't think those pushing stuff like this understand the intangible effects. Being charged like 20 euros for a visa by Japan and 300 euros by the US had a lasting impact on how I've viewed these countries.

Thanks a lot!

Great question. They can be read in either order. The first is primarily about the 1920s, and the formation of "audiovisual" comics in the 1890s. Since the second covers history up to the 2020s, it spends much less time on the 1920s, and the formation of comics as a medium is summarized briefly.

The first is also aimed at a more academic audience (though with general readers in mind), while I tried my best to make the second one as accessible as possible. The 2nd provides a general overview of manga history; the 1st is all about where comics come from and how they were established in Japan

Great question. They can be read in either order. The first is primarily about the 1920s, and the formation of "audiovisual" comics in the 1890s. Since the second covers history up to the 2020s, it spends much less time on the 1920s, and the formation of comics as a medium is summarized briefly.

A sticker that says "Please contact the following number if you need to support"

Sometimes you just feel really supportive and need an outlet

Cars are a fundamentally fascism-friendly technology, given that they disrupt social cohesion, increase isolation, teach people to see others as enemies (road rage etc), destroy public space, and turn the outside from a common good into a survival-of-the-biggest-and-most-dangerous competition.

I don't think most Americans realize how bad they have it. The outside in the US just sucks. Nearly everything is asphalt and cars (and cops, of course). If we manage to defeat the current attempt to establish a Fourth Reich, we should reduce our car dependency as much as possible.

En 1913, se empieza a publicar la historia de “Bing it up father” por el dibujante americano George McManus; esta historieta recibirá fama internacional llegando a Japón en 1923.

Honestly that is a superior title

Congratulations to Pixar for forever associating their name with insufferable right-wing bullshit in my mind and surely many others, in order to appease evangelical bigots.
Hope it'll be worth it for you guys! How's Target doing these days?

Wearing my baseball hat to the funeral dignifiedly

At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

Oh, I should read that, thank you!

Google Maps screenshot showing traveling time by private automobile as 2 hours and 21 minutes, and traveling time by public transit as 1 hour and 33 minutes.

How you can tell you're in a civilized city:

Do not worry. Once you're dead from eating too much glass, your loved ones with leave a bad review and the Market will Self-Regulate.

With all that communist red tape and burdensome government regulation out of the way, the Free Market can finally provide us with the necessary glass in our food.

That's really nice to hear, thank you very much for telling me

Nothing against any of these works! But given that I've written two articles and one book (well, one of the articles is in the book, so I guess more like one article and one book) on this exact topic and exact time period (turn of 20th century), it's a bummer to see my work omitted.

An alphabetically ordered "Bibliography" with no last names between "Ensslin" and "Gardner"

Oh come on, lol

Wow this sounds like my kind of jam.