So what's your plan to stop this from happening again?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) August 29, 2025

I watched Philip Defranco's latest video, which informed me that various right-wing figures like Lauren Boebert and Elon Musk are on Twitter blaming the latest shooting on trans people.  To me, this seems like a mute point.  You could blame the shooting on whatever group you want--trans people, mentally ill, rightwing extremists, Muslims, etc.  The point is, all of these groups have easy access to deadly firearms.  So no matter which group you try to pin the blame on, the root problem is still the same: in America anyone can get a deadly firearm and use it to kill children.  Whoever you choose to blame this on, the real question is: what are you going to do to stop these people from getting guns in the future?

I realize, of course, that I'm just wasting my time.  (Lauren Boebert is a professional troll.  You can't talk reason with these types of people.)  But sometimes I can't help myself.

I'm sure I'm just wasting my time with this, (not to mention this whole issue is pointless), but the way misinformation spreads so quickly on right-wing social media really bugs me.  So I jumped in.

@grok did cracker Barrel CEO say "Maga doesn't have to eat here" ?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) August 23, 2025

and for the record...

No, there's no evidence that Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Felss Masino said "MAGA doesn't have to eat here." This appears to be a fabricated quote from social media amid backlash over their logo change. The company stated their values remain unchanged.

— Grok (@grok) August 23, 2025

Well, yes and no. At the time The Iliad was composed, the legend of Aeneas founding Rome hadn't yet been formed. In the Iliad itself, Aeneas is destined only to be the leader of the survivors of Troy.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) August 6, 2025

For my review of The Iliad, see HERE.

@mikeduncan Just in case you might be losing ad-revenue of off this, I wanted to let you know that the last few episodes of season 10 are not available when listening on itunes.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) April 19, 2025

...hopefully I'm not disturbing him by sending this, but I thought he might appreciate the head's up, just in case he is actually losing ad revenue.

For my review of season 10 of the Revolutions Podcast, see HERE.

I happened to notice those episodes were missing because I'm currently doing one last run through of The Revolutions Podcast.  Follow my progress HERE.

Oh wow! Many thanks for saying hi. I'm glad the review met with your approval.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) January 20, 2025

The review he's talking about is here.  

(By the way, I'm glad he liked that review, because after filming it, I watched it myself and I thought, "This is horrible.  My voice is not clear, I'm wandering all over the place, and why am I smacking my lips so much?"--I certainly didn't notice that I was smacking my lips when I was filming, but it seems to have come through very noticeably on the recording. Anyway...)

Of course, when you post something publicly on the web, it makes it very easy for the author to find it.  And some people (Steve Donoghue, for example) are of the opinion that authors obsessively track down and read all their reviews, from biggest to smallest.

And yet, I tend to forget about this when I write or film a review.  I'm so used to catering to a small audience, I forget that authors can easily find my review.  And so consequently when I review something, I have no expectation that the author will actually find it.  

In this case, I had a lot of complimentary things to say about the book in my review.  (Which is no doubt why the author was pleased.)  But, you'll have to trust me on this, when I filmed the review, I was not at all thinking that the author would find it.  I was nonetheless pleased that he was happy with it.

If memory serves, there are two other times in this blog's history when an author took the trouble to thank me for a review: here and here.  Since I tend to regard authors as much superior than myself, I'm always elated when they actually reach out and make contact with me.

@JoelswagmanJoel I see your Shinsengumi videos are a few years old at this point but I have a question I hope you could answer for me.
I was in the episode where they see the black American ships.
I am still looking for clips of it, but do you know which episode that is?

— Loverboy5k (@loverboy5k) December 3, 2024

I'm not 100%, but I believe it was episode 1. I know it was definitely one of the first few episodes.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) December 3, 2024

As to the Shinsengumi TV show he's referring to, check out my review here from 2008.  I converted that review into a Youtube video in 2020, as part of my "scripted reviews project".

Awesome. Thank you!
If you ever do a rewatch, you can catch me as a trumpet player on the American ship. I’m behind the trumpet player who looks more like he’s playing jazz than the Star Spangled Banner.

— Loverboy5k (@loverboy5k) December 3, 2024

Curiosity got the better of me, and I did a search on Youtube. Is that you at 53:50? https://t.co/54FdUlbuty

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) December 3, 2024

Shinsegumi EP1. See key point at 53:48.

Yes it was! I was in the second row from the front. Guy on the left.
I appreciate your help! pic.twitter.com/nwV8vEfE2X

— Loverboy5k (@loverboy5k) December 3, 2024

Coincidentally, the week before or the week after I was also in the Japanese movie “69.” (Set in 1969!)! I’m in the sunglasses. pic.twitter.com/z268lgGzul

— Loverboy5k (@loverboy5k) December 3, 2024

Ahh... As it happens, that's another movie I've covered in my reviewing project. See my review here: https://t.co/wew7Qc9BUP

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) December 3, 2024

...admittedly it's not a very good review. (I like to think I'd write it a lot differently, if I was writing it now.) But the point is, I am familiar with that movie as well.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) December 3, 2024

That link, once again, is here. As I mentioned in the above tweet, I'm somewhat embarrassed by this review. It was typical of my reviews from this period where I tended to obsess over the politics of something, instead of reviewing the thing itself. I like to think I've moved beyond that stage now.

I liked it. Simple enough. And I’m glad to have read that and watched your video on Shinsengumi. I honestly had little idea about the projects I was in.
I knew about the American side of history in Shinsengumi but not much else. And the high school comedy part of 69.

— Loverboy5k (@loverboy5k) December 3, 2024

Thanks for reaching out. It's interesting to hear about your experiences.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) December 3, 2024

@ebefl I'm a big fan of your old blog, so I have to ask... is it gone for good, or is it just temporarily down for repairs?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) September 15, 2024

The blog in question is here: https://malingual.blogspot.com/.  At the moment it doesn't have any posts, but thank goodness for archive.org
https://web.archive.org/web/20240709230243/https://malingual.blogspot.com/

I've also linked to that blog numerous times over the years, so I guess all those links are dead now.  (Unless I go back and update them to the archive.org versions.)  
Link rot is a big problem with this blog.  Well, I guess that's just the nature of the Internet, huh?

Update

😥
...alright, well, thanks for letting me know.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) September 16, 2024

I was scrolling through Facebook, and I was surprised to see this ad.  I had to pinch myself to make sure it was real.

Okay, there's a good joke in here somewhere, right? But what's the perfect quip to caption this? pic.twitter.com/UXBitETTKU

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 22, 2023

I'm thinking something long the lines of consumer culture: https://t.co/LHWL9fYCPG

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 22, 2023

Or on second thought, maybe the ad is the joke. Maybe Masterclass is fully aware of the irony of putting Chomsky's face on a Black Friday sale, and they're just trolling us. What do you think?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 22, 2023

I've recently discovered your podcast, and I'm finding it to be a very useful companion to the book. Keep up the good work.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 13, 2023

For my progress on the podcast, see HERE.

You're a better man than I am for sticking with these.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 25, 2023

...I may, actually, come back to these books one day. But I'm taking a break for now. For all the Oz books I've read (and reviewed) see HERE.

Yeah, it's the hot season now. Not the best time of the year to be doing a lot of walking around, unfortunately . On the other hand, it's also the low tourist season, so you've got that going for you. I can see from your pictures that there are a lot less crowds in Hoi An now.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 20, 2023

The pictures I was referencing are from his -previous tweet.

For my own pictures of Hoi An, see HERE and HERE.

“The concept of method has not been replaced by the concept of postmethod but rather by an era of textbook-defined practice. What the majority of teachers teach and how they teach … are now determined by textbooks.” Akbari, R. 2008. Postmethod discourse and practice. TESOL Quar

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 18, 2023

The citation got cut off at the end there because of Twitter's word count limitations. The full reference is Akbari, R. 2008. Postmethod discourse and practice. TESOL Quarterly, 42/4, p. 647.
This is one of Scott Thornbury's favorite quotes, and I picked it up from him.  

In fact, I had misremembered it as being a Scott Thorbury original.

I even attributed a version of this quote to Thornbury in a old post here:

...there's a quote from Scott Thornbury. I can't find it now, but I believe it goes something like: "Textbooks are the new methodology." (Hopefully I'm not misquoting him.)

But I googled it just now and realized that it was Thornbury quoting someone else.  Among other places Thornbury has used this quote, see HERE.

I wanted to bookmark this quote so that I could find it again easily, and perhaps link to it in the future.  And so I figured the easiest way to do that would be to send it out as a Tweet.

Reminds me of my favorite tweet of all time: https://t.co/OJzroiyxCz

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 13, 2023

See HERE for that original tweet.

Addendum: May 14, 2023:

Wow! Just 24 hours later, and I'm at 2 retweets, 87 likes, and 1,023 views as of this writing.  (And counting!)  That's actually a lot of views for someone like me.  That means I have a new winner for my most popular tweet of all time.  (For my previous record, see here.)

Of course, I can't really take any credit for this.  The tweet is literally just a link to another tweet.  But I must have stuck it in at just the right moment in the conversation.

(I'm still trying to follow my rules of only reading Tweets from people I know IRL, but the original tweet was retweeted by an old college friend.)

I've been wasting too much time on this website lately. In an effort to reduce the temptation to endlessly scroll, and to make my interactions more meaningful, I decided to unfollow everyone except people I know IRL or people I have corresponded with

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 3, 2023

Apologies if you notice that I've unfollowed you. It wasn't because of anything you did or said. (It's not you, it's me.)

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) May 3, 2023

...of course, most of the Twitter accounts that I had followed won't notice I'm gone.  (Mike Duncan, for example, currently has 124.9K followers on Twitter, doesn't know who I am, doesn't know I've unfollowed him, and if he did know, I'm sure he couldn't care less.)

But there are also a number of smaller accounts that I had followed, and that had been following me back.  Some of them global warming twitter accounts--holdovers from the days when I used to obsessively tweet about global warming.  And some of them were English Teaching accounts--holdovers from the days when I was trying to re-orientate my Internet presence towards professional advancement, and was trying to carve out a space for myself in ELT Twitter.  (See HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, HERE, Etc.)

And some of those smaller accounts were also booktube accounts--holdovers from the days when I was trying to be more active in the booktube community.  (Unfortunately, a lot of booktube twitter is just booktubers lamenting the fact that they don't have more subscribers, an issue that I addressed in this vlog, Let's talk about social media addiction and Booktube.  I'm not entirely sure the community appreciated that video, so maybe it's just as well I'm stepping back from Booktube twitter.)

I have, you can see, gone through a few different phases since I joined Twitter.

...anyway, there was a chance some of those smaller accounts that had been in a reciprocal following relationship with me might notice that I had unfollowed.  (Probably they wouldn't notice. But still, I thought it never hurts to clear the air.  Just in case.  Just to make sure there are no hurt feelings.)

"From Ilion, the wind served me to near Ismarus of the Cicones. I sacked the city and slew them. Their wives and wealth we took and divided precisely, so that no one of us, through me, should go short of his just share." from book 9

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) April 30, 2023

My review of The Odyssey HERE.

I also must have missed that tweet on the 21st. Count me among the people who only started reading Uproxx in the first place because of your reviews. (After a while, I also started to appreciate Mike Ryan, but you were the writer who hooked me in.)

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) April 28, 2023

Updated

I've linked to Vince Mancini's reviews on Uproxx several times over the years:

I linked to his review of The Hateful 8 in this post HERE.

I linked to his review of X-Men: Apocalypse in this post HERE.

I linked to his review of The Wolf of Wall Street in this post HERE.

I linked to his review of Going in Style in this post HERE.

I linked to his review of Spectre in this post HERE.

I linked to his review of Get On Up in this post HERE.

I linked to his 15 Best Films Of 2015 in this post HERE.

"here" meaning? Out of the US?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) April 20, 2023

Ever thought about coming to Vietnam?

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) April 20, 2023

Has Duolingo gotten that bad? I'm personally finding the basics are still the same even after the re-design.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 13, 2022

Ah, yeah. I was only halfway through, but I had a similar problem. When Duolingo transferred my progress over, they started me in a similar spot on the tree, but it was apparent that I had missed some vocabulary in the reshuffling. I resolved the problem...

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 14, 2022

...by just resetting to the beginning and starting over. I was feeling like it was time to consolidate my vocabulary anyway.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) November 14, 2022

P.S.

Follow my progress on Duolingo HERE, and the quizlet I use to consolidate my Duolingo vocabulary HERE.  

For the last time I blogged about Duolingo, see my 2017 post: Struggling to Study Vietnamese.  (I've since started and stopped Duolingo several times since writing that post.)

I can't believe we now have to explain to conservatives why people think hypocrisy is morally repugnant. https://t.co/7GhCaRQAmI

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) October 7, 2022

...although actually, given everything that's been happening the last 8 years, I should totally have known we would end up at this point.

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) October 7, 2022

"The only reason you're criticizing us for not living up to our Christian standards is because we're trying to impose our Christian standards on you!"

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) October 7, 2022

I've decided to change my political position to pro-life. I hadn't realized what a spectacular get-out-of-jail free card it was. It's official now, no matter what else I do, you now have to support me!

— Joel Swagman (@JoelswagmanJoel) October 5, 2022