Alexandra Mathieu
@alexmathieu.bsky.social
270 followers 130 following 120 posts
Bowdoin. Columbia. Current Yale Council of East Asian Studies postdoc. East Asian security, Japan politics, int'l status, cultural diplomacy, nationalism. Lowering my expectations 1 day at a time https://www.alexandramathieu.com
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Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
We have posted an event report for the Japan Conference hosted at the Centre for the Study of Global Japan ealier this year. Thanks to all the participants for a great conference!

munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/news/ev...
Event Report: Japan Conference: University of Toronto 2025
Japan conference 2025, university of toronto
munkschool.utoronto.ca
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
The subtext of this comment is that the Mayor of Boston is Asian-American, whereas the Mayor of Chicago (like almost everyone else that Trump refers to as “a low IQ person”) is Black.
Trump: "Boston had a bad mayor who at least is a reasonable IQ person. Most of them are low IQ. I mean, what's going on in Chicago ... "
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
UPDATE: Following the firing of the director of the student newspaper, Indiana University has now cut the print edition of the newspaper entirely.

www.idsnews.com/article/2025...
Indiana University cuts IDS print entirely, hours after firing student media director
By IDS staff
Oct 15, 2025 1:23 pm · Updated Oct 15, 2025 1:23 pm
   
IU previously directed the Indiana Daily Student to stop printing news coverage in our newspaper. Upon pushback, the university fully cut print, including our special editions. The IDS was not involved in the decision.

Media School Dean David Tolchinsky sent the order to IDS leadership in an email responding to its appeal that the school not censor the newspaper. And the dean attributed the decision to “the campus.” He has not yet responded to a message for clarification.
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
a lot of people want to read Trump and team's fossil fuel obsession as being about *money* but while there is of course a corruption element, it's primarily pure culture war stuff. even many of the big fossil fuel companies want to get into renewables because it's so obviously the future.
Coal production and employment in Wyoming has steadily been declining, much like the rest of the industry in the US.

Coal is a dead industry.

(Chart from here: www.uwyo.edu/cbea/wyoming... )
Graphs showing coal production (left) and employment in coal (right) for the state of Wyoming from 1983 to 2020 from the linked website. Coal production was rapidly increasing until 2008 and has more or less steadily decreased since. Employment in coal likewise rapidly increased until 2009, was stable until 2012 and has rapidly decreased since.
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Jack collaborated with neo-Nazi twins to make a documentary. He was a fan of white supremacist Richard Spencer. He has tweeted 1488, the alphanumeric code for Heil Hitler. He wrote an unreadable anti-antifa book. Last year he wrote a book abt the left called “Unhumans.” That he’s now speaking here…
From Donald Trump's Roundtable on Antifa just now —
"Antifa has been around in various iterations for almost 100 years in some instances, going back to the Weimar Republic in Germany."
— special guest Jack Posobiec
I have no less than 30 at any given moment bc I love the multi desktop feature and make LIBERAL use of it
How many browsing tabs do you typically have open?*

1: 6%
2-5: 54%
6-10: 14%
11-20: 8%
21-30: 2%
More than 30: 3%

*across all windows, on desktop/laptop

yougov.co.uk/topics/techn...
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Good reporting on the South Shore raid from South Side weekly here.

Confirms one thing I was told but didn't put in my own piece because I didn't have a second source and it seemed too insane: border agents segregated arrested residents by race

southsideweekly.com/federal-agen...
Federal Agents Storm South Shore Building, Detaining Families and Children
Families were woken by flashbangs and helicopters as hundreds of federal agents raided their homes. Days later, neighbors are still searching for the missing.
southsideweekly.com
Getting strong "glass cliff" vibes
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Trump's higher ed ransom note is here - everyone would have to acquiesce to their unprecedented demands or not be "given priority for grants," plus they can demand "reimbursement" for "violations" www.wsj.com/us-news/educ...

A mechanism to enforce fealty. An attack on academic freedom and democracy
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
WaPo: Pentagon says it will require reporters "to pledge they won’t gather any information — even unclassified — that hasn’t been expressly authorized for release and will revoke the press credentials of those who do not obey."
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Critical part of the President's new $100,000 charge for H1-B visas: The Administration can also offer a $100,000 discount to any person, company, or industry that it wants. Replacing rules with arbitrary discretion.

Want visas? You know who to call and who to flatter.
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
The key problem with what Ezra Klein says here is that he fails – or is unwilling – to grapple with the fundamental reality of the political conflict: The movement that dominates today’s Right fully rejects the very idea of “living here with each other” as equals. That’s their defining position.
"All I can say for me in the work I do is that I want to create a space that takes our disagreements seriously, that takes the stakes of them seriously, the consequences for people seriously, but does so without deepening our divisions irreparably. We are going to have to live here with each other"
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
When I was placed on the Professor Watchlist in 2021, people sent death threats about my children. I had security officers monitor my 8yo at school.

Where is all the outrage for those of us who have been targeted for years? Where is the outrage for our families?

My own colleagues are silent.
fuentes posting a call to non-violence to his followers (who will most likely see it for what it is: a disingenuous play to placate the "normies" and give him some cover), does indicate that at the very least, he came to the same conclusion my friend and I did: probably the latter.
a friend and I have been debating whether the alleged Kirk shooter was either a "dirtbag left cumtown chapo stupidpol poster" or if he was an "irony poisoned, terminally online, neonazi groyper type" given the gun casings, which shows just how impenetrable this is going to be for MSM
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
it’s early but it seems like maybe this is relevant again (wrote it last week fml)
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Just to be blunt, if you want Wired and 404 and The Verge to employ reporters who understand the memes on bullet casings and can connect them to gaming culture while having the legal and support resources to deal with waves of harassment when we do it… you have to subscribe and pay for the work
the entire media ecosystem is just not built or ready for events like this and far right billionaires like larry ellison buying news orgs will only make this worse
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
There are very, VERY few people who are equipped to talk about this shooter correctly given the brainrot written on the shell casing. You have to understand so much of online culture to get it and also understand how that culture is both connected to and separate from real world ideological spaces
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
basically a generational cohort split here where certain younger people intuitively grasp the irony poisoned context, and if you aren't already up to speed, very hard to explain
Watching the cable news commentary on the bullet engravings is wild because none of these people seem to realize that the content of the engravings are indicative of extremely online meme brain rot
Reposted by Alexandra Mathieu
Too bad the GOP effectively criminalized studying how information moves online and news orgs laid off and demonized all the reporters who covered the burgeoning online accelerationist performative death cults. All of that work was somehow "censorship" that needed to be stopped. Now we're here.
fuentes posting a call to non-violence to his followers (who will most likely see it for what it is: a disingenuous play to placate the "normies" and give him some cover), does indicate that at the very least, he came to the same conclusion my friend and I did: probably the latter.
a friend and I have been debating whether the alleged Kirk shooter was either a "dirtbag left cumtown chapo stupidpol poster" or if he was an "irony poisoned, terminally online, neonazi groyper type" given the gun casings, which shows just how impenetrable this is going to be for MSM