Roland Kelts, writing for The Times Literary Supplement: At fifty-one, Hideo Furukawa is among the generation of Japanese writers I'll call "A. M.," for "After Murakami." Haruki Murakami is Japan's most internationally renowned living author. His work has been translated into over fifty languages, his books sell in the millions, and there is annual speculation about his winning the Nobel Prize. Over four decades, he has become one of the most famous living Japanese people on the planet. It's impossible to overestimate the depth of his influence on contemporary Japanese literature and culture, but it is possible to characterize it. The American poet Louise Gluck once said that younger writers couldn't appreciate the shadow cast over her generation by T. S. Eliot. Murakami in Japan is something like that. Yet unlike Eliot in English-speaking nations, Murakami in Japan has been a liberator, casting rays of light instead of a pall, breathing gusts of fresh air into Japan's literary landscape. Now on the verge of seventy, he generates little of Harold Bloom's "anxiety of influence" among his younger peers. For them he has opened three key doors: to licentious play with the Japanese language; to the binary worlds of life in today's Japanese culture, a hybrid of East and West; and to a mode of personal behaviour -- cool, disciplined, solitary -- in stark contrast to the cliques and clubs of Japan's past literati. Japan's current literary and cultural scene takes in "light novels," brisk narratives that lean heavily on sentimentality and romance and often feature visuals drawn from manga-style aesthetics, and dystopian post-apocalyptic stories of intimate violence, such as Natsuo Kirino's suspense thrillers, Out and Grotesque. Post-Fukushima narratives in film and fiction explore a Japan whose tightly managed surfaces disfigure the animal spirits of its citizens; and many of the strongest voices and characters in this recent trend have been female.

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A group of masked assailants attack minority camp on the outskirts of Lviv, killing one man and wounding four others.

Google has introduced a small change to Play Store apps that could significantly protect several Android users. From a report: Earlier this week, Google quietly rolled out a feature that adds a string of metadata to all APK files (that's the file type for Android apps) when they are signed by the developer. You can't install an application that hasn't been signed during its final build, so that means that all apps built using the latest APK Signature Scheme will have a nice little chunk of DRM built into them. And eventually, your phone will run a version of Android that won't be able to install apps without it.

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The one literary form that doesn't have criticism is news.

API wrapper around the 'tar' utility

Easy access to a variety of OpenGL prototyping tools

return name and handle of a temporary file safely

DC Comics announced earlier this week that it has partnered with Walmart to revive its DC Giant range as a 100-page anthology format comic book. Four new series revolving around Batman, Superman, the Justice League, and the Teen Titans will launch solely in the retail stores starting July 1. From a report: Starting next month, each of the new monthly series will collect stories from the past two decades of DC Comics publishing -- including stories released as recently as this year -- revolving around each book's titular characters, as well as a few side stories featuring guest characters like Harley Quinn, the Terrifics, or even the recently introduced Sideways from the Dark Matter publishing initiative. But on top of that, each series will also include new ongoing stories from top DC creatives like Tom King, Andy Kubert, and the recently-arrived Brian Michael Bendis -- setting the Giant line apart from Marvel and Archie's digest series, which exclusively feature reprinted stories.

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I forgot how great bike rides are in hot humid weather.

First, you have to know I have been a Mets fan since 1962 when I was seven years old. I went to Mets games with my mother and father, uncle, and lots of games with my little brother. We grew up within walking distance of Shea Stadium. That's the first thing.

Second, the Mets suck. All Mets fans know that. You can't hurt our feelings by saying the Mets suck. We know it. They were born in suckage. Their ability to fuck up is legendary. It's deep in the culture of the team and its fans that they screw up. A lot.

We have the dorkiest mascot ever. He sucks as much as the team does.

Casey Stengel, the first manager of the Mets said: "You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, ‘Can’t anybody here play this game?’"

But every once in a while, something happens. We make a trade for someone who hits a shitload of home runs. We draft a couple of pitchers who make history they're so hard to hit. Once we had a second baseman played in the postseason like Babe Ruth. And game 6 of the 1986 World Series. Sometimes the Mets are the opposite of sucking. Sometimes they are great.

This is why they are called The Amazin' Mets. Or The Amazins for short. (Casey Stengel coined the term, but when he said it, it wasn't because they were so great. Heh.)

We don't mind if the Yankees fans, the team we share a city with, look down on us. But we do mind if, when the Mets are doing great, they start wearing Mets hats. Like they did in 2015. That, in our philosophy of baseball is what defines the Mets. We love them whether they suck or not. Whether we're on cloud nine or in the dumps. Yankees fans of course have no philosophy.

Once after the 2000 World Series on the subway into Manhattan a little boy dressed in a Mets hat and jacket was crying. I said to him "Son, if you're going to be a Mets fan you're going to be doing a lot of that."

Anyway, I guess that explains how I feel about the Mets. But I realized today it's also how I feel about journalism. It sucks most of the time. Most of the time they skim the surface, or kiss the ass of the rich and powerful at the expense of progress. Usually they get it so wrong it makes you cry. Most of the time journalism sucks. We know it.

But if you call them The Enemy of the People, we know what you're doing. Just because we love them and they suck doesn't mean we're stupid. We get it. And when you take that particular shortcut, you become the enemy. There will come a day of reckoning. We know someday the press, like the Mets, will win again. We know it. It might not be this year or next, but the day will come. And you'll get yours then.

Warner Bros is cracking down on local Harry Potter fan festivals around the country, saying it's necessary to halt unauthorized commercial activity. From a report: Fans, however, liken the move to Dementors sucking the joy out of homegrown fun, while festival directors say they'll transfigure the events into generic celebrations of magic. "It's almost as if Warner Bros. has been taken over by Voldemort, trying to use dark magic to destroy the light of a little town," said Sarah Jo Tucker, a 21-year-old junior at Chestnut Hill College, which hosts a Quidditch tournament that coincides with the annual suburban Philadelphia festival. Philip Dawson, Chestnut Hill's business district director, said Warner Bros. reached out to his group in May, letting them know new guidelines prohibit festivals' use of any names, places or objects from the series. That ruled out everything from meet-and-greet with Dumbledore and Harry to Defense Against the Dark Arts classes. Related story, from 18 years ago: Harry Potter Sites vs. Warner Brothers.

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Trump says the press is the enemy of the people. Only a true enemy of the people would say that.

An idea for journalists of all genders -- broaden your discourse outside of journalism. You all just talk with each other. Get ideas from outside journalism and punditry. We'll all do better.

US president says people entering country with no proper documents should be sent back without court cases or judges.

Thousands of civilians are fleeing Deraa as Syrian government helicopters continue to drop barrel bombs as part of an offensive against the last rebel stronghold in southwest Syria.