Posted in: Carbon pollution from high flying rich in private jets soars See in context
So how many of you want these high profile assassination targets to fly on the planes you fly on?
0 ( +0 / -0 )
Posted in: Trump win likely to dampen Ishiba's ambitions for U.S. troop pact change See in context
I suspect Japan will soon be paying a lot more to host the Americans and buying a lot more military kit from America. Some of which might even be delivered.
Any changes will be Trump's decision and in his favour. That's how he works. European nations will also have to pay a lot more or switch to NATO Lite for the next four years. Trump will work out what European nations should be paying and reduce US spending accordingly. In Japan, he will expect to operate the US protection racket at a profit.
The Afghans couldn't pay, so he signed off on the process of handing them over to the Taliban.
0 ( +1 / -1 )
Posted in: Australia moves to ban children under 16 from social media See in context
Scan of passport? Scan of birth certificate? Genius idea to get people to digitise and transmit ID info that can then be snaffled. Plus, how will tourists use social media when on holiday in Australia? Are they banning 15 year old foreign tourists from using it? When there are local weather issues, most schools use social media to alert kids that their schools are closed. During Covid, they used it to stay in touch with their pupils.
Either get parents to do their job under threat of being fined or social media can pull out of Australia. It's only 26 million people. If they stay there, the Aussie government will just use them as a piggy bank to make up for all their financial failures.
-1 ( +1 / -2 )
Posted in: PlayStation 5 Pro goes on sale, but will gamers pay hefty price to play? See in context
The original standalone consoles, cartridge or CD based, kept working. Nowadays they will become expensive doorstops/e-waste when they turn off the servers. Not worth it.
8 ( +9 / -1 )
Posted in: Organized religion not the only aspect of Japanese spirituality See in context
Organised superstition and organised religion are the same thing, originating and managed by different groups. Superstition operates from the bottom up, religion from the top down. Superstition is the equivalent of 'going viral' and moral panics. Religion is the equivalent of fascism and nudge units. Superstition works from the mob up the food chain, religion works from those running the show down, controlling the proles.
Religion expanding from its traditional turf is best displayed by fandom (music, sport, politics) and all those advocates of Apple or Linux. After years of Windows getting progressively worse with each version, Microsofties are an endangered species.
The clergy and confession has competition from psychoanalysis, influencers, agony aunts, help lines and 'life coaches'.
I thought we had got past calling young women 'confused', 'neurotic' or suffering from 'hysteria'. Most of them are flocking to remote places for Instagram shots.
Not sure the emissions from all those Toyotas will make Japan 'healthy'.
2 ( +5 / -3 )
Posted in: Western officials suspect Russia behind plot to put incendiary packages on cargo planes See in context
And our lot are too weak or incompetent to respond. They have had two years to dismantle Putin's regime.
0 ( +1 / -1 )
Posted in: North Korean troops in Russia shelled by Ukrainian forces See in context
1.3m but not all equally competent. Putin will want competent soldiers or no free oil. But North Koreans are rarely in the best of health. And it rather dents the narrative of glorious supremacy when the body bags start arriving back in NK. There are risks in this for Kim.
Putin is surviving largely due to the incompetence of the West (pumping up the price of Russian oil and sending limited amounts of often old kit) and poor tactics (no attacks on the Russian government in Moscow, limited success on command, control and mil infrastructure, and the default to trench warfare - the most costly warfare of all).
If there is no change in the White House, expect this to become ever more Orwellian and just rumble on for years.
Will there be a route to asylum in SK if large numbers of NK soldiers manage to get themselves captured? That will a novel problem for SK to deal with.
-1 ( +1 / -2 )
Posted in: North Korea fires multiple ballistic missiles toward sea See in context
Tired political theatre.
But interesting that NK is 12,000 soldiers light. Seoul will be pleased.
0 ( +0 / -0 )
Posted in: Over the next few days, millions of Americans will learn that someone they loathe will be president of the U.S. How can the winner unify the country? See in context
Follow the UK example. Blame everything on Putin, Covid and social media, whilst the media stay silent.
-1 ( +5 / -6 )
Posted in: U.S. government tries to rein in an out-of-control subscription economy See in context
Subscriptions are a bad idea for those paying them. Particularly for software.
I think the stats are something like 20% of gym members use them regularly, and as many as two-thirds of members use them hardly ever or just once.
Surprisingly, they can be bad for the companies selling them too. Netflix have a fixed amount of money coming in, so they have a fixed amount to spend on new content. If that content is poorly received, subscribers may drop the service. But they won't necessarily join up for one good movie or TV series. A massive hit that might have pulled in tonnes of cash at cinemas and sold a huge number of DVDs worldwide, may not earn them any extra cash. Plus they are on the hamster wheel for producing endless content.
0 ( +0 / -0 )
Posted in: Nvidia to join Dow Jones Industrial Average, replacing Intel See in context
Fakenomics. What sort of benchmark is provided by an index that drops poor performers and replaces them with rising ones?
0 ( +1 / -1 )
Posted in: Shelf-sharing seeks to save bookstores in Japan See in context
These folks are heroes. Shelf space is normally reserved for top sellers from major publishers, who sell books of varying quality courtesy of their advertising budgets, covers and blurbs. Some awful books get shelf space and sales in consequence. Other books - indie publishers and self publishing - struggle to be seen.
There are loads of interesting books, often breaking the restrictive guidelines of the major publishers, that people never read because they never see them on a shelf.
I wish we had this in the UK. For a long time we have had supermarkets who charge producers for shelf space for their products, or we did. There are shortages and product numbers have now declined, so there is plenty of spare shelf space now. But I don't think we have bookshops like this yet. I hope it pays the bills and works out. It's good news for authors and readers.
2 ( +2 / -0 )
Posted in: The power of 'ne' and the art of talk See in context
I suspect there is a genetic reason for people (like me) being a little further along the neurological spectrum, especially men, which may be regarded as aspie behaviour at the soft end of autism. Maybe there is a bump in the number of sufferers in Japan. Hence, hikikomori. Or maybe Japanese people are more willing to live their own lives than try to conform (in that case, well done).
Alongside this, traditional Asian societies tend to impose more gender segregation than is common in the West. That will make it tougher for those trying to bridge the Mars/Venus divide, when circumstances demand it.
Add lockdowns, Zoom and the complexities, hypersensitivities and puritanism unleashed by the culture wars, and more people may be finding communicating to be a minefield.
From personal experience, if you are like me, you will never 'learn' to do small talk (or obtain from it what 'norms' appear to get out of it). Ditto for dinner parties and other weird 'norm' stuff. You can however develop strategies to fake it convincingly enough until you can make an exit and leave them to it, whilst you go off and do something interesting.
And yes, half listening (when you are thinking about something else), combined with grunts of affirmation (or 'ne'), may be a viable fall back.
-1 ( +0 / -1 )
Posted in: How harmful are microplastics to human health? See in context
Laputan scaremongering. Swift would have had a right go at this.
quote: experts recommend people limit their exposure to microplastics by avoiding plastic bottles, not heating food in plastic containers, wearing clothes made of natural material and ventilating their home.
Ridiculous. Nobody is doing this. Not even doctors or scientists.
People are dying in wars, of disease and starvation and we get endless demonisation of plastic bottles. Most plastic pollution is historic (from before recycling) or emanates from the Global South. Go preach to them. Tell them to stop chucking it in their rivers.
-4 ( +0 / -4 )
Posted in: Robot retrieves first melted fuel from Fukushima nuclear reactor See in context
New technologies will come along, but Japan may have to come to terms with the possibility that this may never be fixable. Perhaps someone can work out what the regional and global consequences will be when humanity can no longer curate this mess. And there are plenty more Fukushimas out there, that will not survive WW III intact.
2 ( +4 / -2 )
Posted in: Japan plans automated cargo transport system to relieve shortage of drivers See in context
Or they could just run freight trains and freight shinkansen on Japan's world class rail networks and save a zillion yen. There may eventually be limits to the amount of cash Japan can spend on maglevs and the like, as tax revenues and the global economy declines.
It won't happen in London as there is no cash for major infrastructure any more. Hence HS2 got cut back.
2 ( +3 / -1 )
Posted in: Newspaper non-endorsements at Washington Post, LA Times fit a trend, but their readers aren't happy See in context
Endorsements suggest that everything in the paper is biased. It takes US newspapers down into the cess pit where British newspapers operate. UK papers are rampantly bias in their political allegiances, and have little value as a result.
If you want to live in a bubble, filter out all dissenting views from your life and live in your happy little world where everyone thinks like you. But you will lose touch with the real world, and reality will eventually steamroller you.
I really dislike editorial partiality in newspapers. It's cheap and shoddy. Report the news honestly and allow people to make up their own minds. Give all parties space to put forward their views.
3 ( +5 / -2 )
Posted in: Google ad change could affect millions of small businesses See in context
The best place to advertise your business to locals and tourists is Google Maps.
0 ( +0 / -0 )
Posted in: Gov't to set up panel to discuss ways for small firms to hike wages See in context
This isn't about corporates or unions. It relates to small businesses with a limited number of employees. Japan has lots of those.
The obvious solution is to raise prices to cover all extra costs. But this sends a fiscal shock down the supply chain and may wipe out a good deal of it.
A lot of small businesses in Japan have thin margins and simply won't survive the switch to an inflationary economy. Many of them produce key components for big companies. It will be like firing a shotgun at their supply chains.
Large corporates could take shares in them to secure their finances (and increase wages), stabilising their own supply chains. But what happens if you make parts for 10 companies, one buys in, and demands that you only make parts for them. Not for their competitors.
The switch to inflation will affect Japan rather as Brexit-originated inflation damaged the UK. It will not be pleasant.
Inflation kills more than an economy. It erased a chunk of the LDP's vote and will erase a good deal more in Japan - jobs, employers, retail, services. Demonise deflation all you want. It is inflation that really hurts.
3 ( +3 / -0 )
Posted in: Japanese job-hunters reportedly dismayed by requests for 'photos showing who you are as a person' See in context
Finally, someone in Japan is taking their first clumsy steps to treat their potential cubicle droids as real humans. Maybe they would be a better company to work for than the others.
It may be a positive development rather than a creepy intrusion. They are not asking for you in your JK glamour shots, but some proof that you function as a human being beyond the traditional Japan Inc. path: School in uniform until office in suit until deceased in coffin. They may actually want people who have a life beyond that.
The assumption seems to be that someone standing at the South Pole or invading Belgium would get a thumbs up, and someone cooking with their family or asleep, face down on their keyboard, clutching their game controller, would not. I'm not sure that's correct. Put a bit of thought into it and this is a rare chance to distinguish yourself from the masses.
Imagine you work in HR. What else do you go on? I'm sure they get thousands of CVs all written according to cram school hints and all pretty much the same. Get snapping and bag yourself a job.
4 ( +5 / -1 )
Posted in: Indonesian forests pay the price for the growing global biomass energy demand See in context
Biomass from virgin sub-/tropical forest destruction is worse than fossil fuels. Fossil emissions can at least be filtered.
Russia's vast tracts of less species diverse forest, get some protection from US sanctions. Indonesia's forests get a death sentence due to an unholy pact between the governments of Indonesia, Japan and Korea, and their chums in private industry. Lots of money going into connected pockets. No press enquiries answered. SLAPP lawsuits used to silence criticism.
Why do we even bother when governments are actually using climate change as an excuse to get rich, destroying habitats at an ever faster rate. The bad guys always win in the end.
Just give up, don't have kids, and enjoy what time we have left as best you can. Climate change and/or war will wipe everything out soon enough.
3 ( +3 / -0 )
Posted in: Spanish floods kill 95 as year of rain falls in a day in Valencia See in context
We are getting more droughts and more floods. If we develop resilient infrastructure, we can deal with this. We can harvest the flood water to get us through the droughts. Now go ask the politicians why they are not doing this. It's not like they didn't know it was going to happen. Sympathy and compensation are not enough each time it happens is not a solution.
0 ( +1 / -1 )
Posted in: Are bioplastics really the wonder alternative to petro plastics? See in context
You need your bioplastics to be produced from extant waste products that do not cannibalise other industries. So not from coir, which has a solid supply chain. You also don't want to steal from food products or take too much land, which will be stolen from agriculture or native forest.
Waste products that go to animal husbandry are a good source. As the meat trade winds down, you are maintaining the value of the waste in an alternate supply chain.
It's OK to require industrial composting, as long as people put it in green waste bins, not home composters. The problems begin when it isn't 100% organic or looks like real plastic and is removed from the process for fear that it is.
It is also important to recognise that there is no 'pure', zero impact solution. And maybe someone should check to see if our orbit is taking us a little closer to the sun than it used to. Because if it is, none of this will help.
Regardless of the above, we really need to be improving infrastructural resilience. Governments seem happier to look busy after extreme weather events rather than spend money building lagoons, reservoirs and fire resistance to deal with flood/drought cycles. If your government isn't improving resilience, replace them with a better one.
1 ( +1 / -0 )
Posted in: Australia to ramp up missile production as Indo Pacific enters new missile age See in context
I'm sure Aussies facing the next round of bushfires and flooding will be pleased with how those billions are being spent.
-2 ( +1 / -3 )
Posted in: Sexual, economic and demographic problems besetting 'Reiwa families' See in context
Nobody is happy anymore.
Marriage is expensive and there are no guarantees. Divorce exists for a reason. Get one when you need to and move on.
Never pay a random YouTuber for talking at you. That sort of thing may be grounds for divorce.
Paying for private schooling is also daft. If they are capable, they will fill in the gaps themselves from text books, apprenticeships, working and the net. If they are not capable, you are just wasting your money.
You want to go to uni in America? Get a job, save for it, and you'll end up with a better degree from the work you put in on languages and course material whilst earning. But choose wisely, foreign students are milked for cash and some very expensive degrees are of questionable value. You may be better off bagging a degree in Japan and spending a year in the States (or another English speaking nation), doing a Masters or professional training.
Here's a positive thought to end on. When nobody is happy anymore, governments start wars to avoid being blamed. War will change your perspective. If your kids are alive and intact, you won't worry about much else.
3 ( +3 / -0 )
Posted in: EU to impose duties on electric vehicle imports from China from Thursday See in context
Tariffs damage those levying them. Here, geopolitics whipping the green transition into a poor second. If you can't bag a cheap Chinese EV, get a second hand ICE vehicle instead. European governments clearly aren't prioritising climate change, so why should their citizens care?
-1 ( +3 / -4 )
Posted in: Foreign man arrested for grabbing former AKB48 idol on Tokyo street, forcing her to ground See in context
Don't do the easy thing and just deport him. Convict him of sexual assault and lock him up for a while first. Then deport him to wherever he originally came from.
-6 ( +4 / -10 )
Posted in: Enoshima Sea Candle See in context
Enoshima is a windy island, so the stairs can be quite an experience. Enoshima has a lot of stairs and an outdoor eating area where the local Black Kites may swoop down and pinch snacks off the unwary. The island gets very busy, even out of season, but is well worth a visit. The EnoPass gives you a heap of assorted benefits, including free use of several escalators. Plan your trip to include rides on the Enoshima Electric Railway and the Shonan Monorail. If you like trains, Japan is your happy place.
3 ( +6 / -3 )
Posted in: Shigeru Ishiba: Japan's train-loving PM derailed in election See in context
If you don't like the LDP, I wouldn't advise celebrating Ishiba's misery too much. The alternative is unlikely to be an opposition regime. The LDP's fall back may be Sanae Takaichi doing a Trump with populist right-wing policies. Many of you on here may well find yourselves on the wrong end of those policies.
0 ( +0 / -0 )
Posted in: 30 plaintiffs in Japan sue Facebook owner Meta over fake ads See in context
A famous person is pictured with a quote to invest in something, so they clicked on a link to buy it with Bitcoin?
Come on, the due diligence bar to investing is higher than that.
Do they want everything that appears on the net to be checked by a civil servant and only go live when the paperwork gets the magic hanko of certification and is faxed to Meta?
Caveat emptor. Use that chunk of your head between your ears. If it looks too good to be true, it will be.
Anyone that lazy with their cash and that gullible should surf only in the company of another person.
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1 ( +1 / -0 )
Japan opposition gets 1st key Diet post in 30 years, in blow to PM "...in blow to PM"? That doesn't…
Posted in: Japan opposition gets 1st key Diet post in 30 years, in blow to PM
We don't need more idiots telling Free Ukraine to surrender.
Posted in: Musk joined Trump's call with Ukraine's Zelenskyy, media reports say
Posted in: Musk joined Trump's call with Ukraine's Zelenskyy, media reports say
Posted in: Roppongi Hills Christmas