Let's start blogging in 2025 (more like 2026)

It's a bit gauche to start a new blog my ruminating about what it means to start a blog. I've done it countless times before by now. The difference is, I think, that I now have things to say.

My research is on Japanese politics, but that has taken me through topics such as emotions and conspiracy theories. I have a background in Japanese literature and film, and I still read a great deal of works outside of political science. In particular, I don't have a venue to talk more about media and how they affect me and my thinking about research.

Sometimes there's just something I want to quickly explore, maybe ending on a point that I can later disavow. I want to speculate on the things I'm seeing happen in front of me because that's how I can test my initial interpretation and maybe follow it through to some larger, more academically publishable argument.

And so, I hope this can serve as a testing ground for research as well as a place where I can write a paragraph or two about a video game I've played without any of it being plugged into social media's perverse incentives. What the internet used to look like, in other words.