GBR48 comments

quote: This data still doesn’t justify why the Japanese study English and not Chinese.

English is still the international language of business and the largest common linguistic denominator as a first or second language. So it is the best investment of your time and money.

Japan speaks American English because it was not part of the British Empire or Commonwealth. Instead it was briefly occupied by the Americans, post-WWII. These things stick.

This is an article, not a 'conversation', a trite and annoying term, probably American in origin, like adding 'super' before everything, a few years ago.

Learn RP English to maximise your investment, and try to avoid tutors with a heavy accent.

So with over 33,000 dead Palestinians, American Democrats are going to support Israel some more? To kill more Palestinians, or to target Iran and widen the war? As for Ukraine - Putin's regime should have been directly targeted from day 1. They are responsible for it. It would have cost peanuts and been over long ago.

Some folk are just more susceptible to addiction. It can mean gambling, alcohol, exercise, dieting, collecting things, disordered eating or stalking people. If it isn't one thing, they will become addicted to another. They are often fiendishly clever at hiding it from their families, until they get arrested, or the bailiffs turn up at the door.

Psych support services do need to be improved, but banning everyone from doing something because some people become addicted to it is daft. And it doesn't work. You would just push the addicts into underground betting run by the yaks.

The casinos are intended to milk rich foreigners, pulling trade from Macau and Dubai. Most (if not all) of the people who are complaining about it wouldn't be allowed through the door.

Good news for the Iranian economy then.

All those sanctions on Russia have backfired.

Russia to grow faster than all advanced economies says IMF https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-68823399

Now Iran gets a leg up.

The money isn't the problem. Look at Brexit Britain. There the government has promised to expand free child care, but nobody has the staff to do it any more. Nurseries are closing having been buried in new safeguarding regulations, broken by inflation and denied migrant labour as staff. Things aren't quite as bad in Japan, but the issues are the same. Sometimes just throwing money at a problem isn't enough.

I guess that means Japan is an arms-length ally. OK as a distant military shield, less so closer to home.

The Global South and unaligned smaller nations will be getting their cheap energy, aluminium and steel, and everything produced cheaply with it - green transition kit like turbines - from the BRICS bloc, and turning away from the West. Biden is making America expensive again. It might work for Apple, it won't work for America in general. Inflation is the ultimate regime killer.

Climate change is global. Switzerland can fund reductions in emissions anywhere on the planet, improving lives and communities in the Global South - those using coal and dumping their plastic in rivers, whilst reducing emissions more slowly at home where drastic cuts would see the economy devastated and the government kicked out of power. You can only move as fast as majority opinion permits in a democracy - on the big issues, that is usually generationally. Scientists and activists (who will not be particularly impacted by change - most of the kids in the photo won't lose their jobs or careers, or their homes when they can't pay their mortgages) may not have a problem with forcing restrictions on others, but it won't end well if they try.

Don't share your device or allow someone else to use your PC or laptop. It rarely ends well.

You can become addicted to anything, so become addicted to fiscal probity. Keep track of your finances, limit how much you allow yourself to spend each month, and work at increasing your income with side-hustles. If your spending worries you, switch to cash. When you have spent it, you can spend no more. Above all, avoid credit cards.

A cheap hobby is a very good idea.

The US economy and its global soft power has been based on GAFA's dominance for more than three decades. Their own spooks have access to every system and device on the planet, one way and another. Their policies are already breaking that, forcing Huawei into producing their own replacement operating systems.

If US politicians break GAFA up or suppress it, they will be destroying their own global dominance. The US equivalent of Brexit. State control of tech would be the only thing worse than corporate control. Politicians do a terrible job of running economies and maintaining the peace. Now they want to ruin our tech too?

There are issues with big tech that can all be fixed, but politicians on activist mandates are not best placed to fix them without causing huge amounts of collateral damage.

Monopolies and duopolies are natural in tech because technical compatibility is essential. It's usually a 70/30 or 80/20 split. Any intervention there requires more knowledge and ability than you will ever find in a political committee.

Migrant labour built modern America. It will be required for Biden's new infrastructure push.

If you choose the nationalist option and kick them out, your economy and services will collapse as they have in the UK. You really don't want to be like Brexit Britain is now.

Interest rates are artificially hiked for no good reason. They are not a joystick with which you can manipulate inflation, because inflation has other causes. They just add to the burden, widening the suffering to the middle classes.

Full employment equates to about 5% unemployment, most of whom are not working for a reason. Cheap access to migrant labour ensures that sectors, especially seasonal ones like agriculture and tourism, can top up when they need to. The migrants pay tax, recycle money into the local economy, and send some home, supporting their families.

Migrant labour is important to your economy, your food security, your healthcare system and your services. As important a resource as rare Earth metals.

I spend hours online each day because I work online. And so will today's kids when they leave school.

1950s-1960s. Kids are spending too much time listening to music/the radio.

1970s-1980s. Kids are spending too much time watching TV.

1980s-1990s. Kids are spending too much time playing computer games.

1990s-today. Kids are spending too much time on their smartphones.

1950's-today. People are worrying too much about whatever moral panic is being hyped by the media.

It's not just an innovation issue. It's also a language issue, not least because AI is language centric - even more so than general internet content, which is one of the reasons why JP tech dipped when the bubbles shifted to the web. A Japanese language AI will be an isolate. Great in Japan, chocolate teapot elsewhere.

You can fix innovation in Japanese companies by siloing it and running by Western rules - this already happens.

I still think AI is simply the next bubble along after VR, AR, Blockchain and the metaverse. It will find a use in various small niches and be widely hated as a fifth rate alternative to real people in customer service. That doesn't merit the investment.

There are better technological developments to focus on, although Japan does like to throw big money at Western trends.

Distributed tech offers so much - increased resilience, security and privacy by design, much lower cost and fewer regulatory issues. It's still mainly operating in the academic arena, although the component parts are already built into Android.

Security is easier than infosec corporations make out. You need to keep your private data on an intranet, inaccessible from the public internet. Staff airgap your data with two screens/PCs on every desk. One connected to the net, one not. It's simple, cheap and secure. Systems are now so complex that there will always be vulnerabilities, so designing them out physically is the only solution. All the overpriced software solutions you can buy will eventually fail and your staff will never keep up. There will always be another zero day vuln just around the corner.

In many cases, it is easier and cheaper to operate a hybrid system of paper and simpler tech, than try to shoehorn your company into an off-the-shelf software package. Yes, paper: index cards, ledgers, lockable cupboards, physical folders and files. It works and its dirt cheap. And no hackers from Russia or China can access it. Some companies are spending eyewatering amounts every year, maintaining systems, fixing them, replacing them. It's crazy. The rush to digitalise everything is corporate extremism. We need to rethink it and take a simpler, cheaper and more secure approach.

And ignore the ravings of big tech. They are just advertising their next product. The 'emperor's new clothes' are now overpriced tech solutions that you would be better off without.

Nationalist state funding for local chip production is just eating tax revenue that could be spent on education, health and the reduction of poverty. It's not state money, it's borrowing against the taxes you pay, and your kids will pay. You can't stop governments doing daft things like that, but you can make better decisions about the tech you use, and the stuff you invest in.

quote: While the rest of the world trying to catch up with smart phone trend, Japanese company still loyal to their flip phone.

Smartphone apps can be hacked far more easily than feature phones. Anyone who has any data or privacy to protect should be using a feature phone as their primary phone.

Improving Saudi/Israeli relations may have been the reason Hamas attacked. Without military conflict, groups like Hamas lose their raison d'être. The Saudis and other Arab powers don't like Iran and want to form a stable regional superpower. That would include Saudi oil/money and Israeli tech. There would be no place for Hamas in that equation, so Hamas stir things up at the expense of the people of Gaza. If the US back off giving their unqualified support to Israel, Israel will widen the conflict. Progress in the Middle East may only happen when something, even a local war, takes it past the rut it has been stuck in, post-WWII. But it has been very hard on the people of Gaza, simply because their militants sided with Iran.

The Global South may not pay back those loans once the infrastructure is built and regimes change. The Chinese property market is going to make Lehman Brothers look like a minor blip. Suppressing the new found consumer culture will not be as easy as Xi thinks. Washington will eventually cotton on and offer GS nations more loot, whilst the Russians are more useful allies than China to GS dictatorships to keep terrorist groups, the political opposition and their citizens in order, as they provide Wagner-style military muscle.

You really need a kot of competence at the top to run stuff like this well.

I hope all that wood came from those cedars that dose Tokyo in pollen every year, and not a more benign carbon-capturing forest somewhere, that now has a heck of a lot fewer things for birds to sit in. I suppose it is a good advert for what you can do with wood, but we may need more trees to remain intact rather than be logged in future. But not the cedars. Get rid of the cedars.

The mascot (oh dear) could be recycled by protest groups concerned about GM food, genetic engineering and nuclear waste.

To be fair, the organisers couldn't foresee Covid, a collapsing economy, antagonism to the Olympics, rampant inflation and war when they were bidding for this.

On reflection, creating a permanent, accessible woodland to site the event in, with big dollops of Ghibli and a pro-nature theme would have been a better idea. But these things are easier with hindsight.

-business models that produced and sold fewer products.

That just means higher prices and shortages, damaging livelihoods and increasing poverty.

If these activists want this to happen, they need to get elected on a mandate to suppress the economy, erase jobs, increase prices and empty supermarket shelves. Have fun with that, given that a simple Low Traffic Neighourhood gets councillors death threats.

There are also limits to the roll out of green tech, that these companies can fund. Turbines and solar panels take time to produce. There will be more limits in the future when the USG bans Chinese kit - green tech will cost a lot more and take much longer to obtain. Expect any green transition to take three or four times as long without Chinese production.

Although carbon credits are a scam, it doesn't matter where on the planet you reduce emissions. It all counts.

Western companies could pay to reduce emissions in the global south (where wood and coal are the main fuel sources and plastic-filled rivers are common). Here, their intervention can actually improve lives rather than impoverishing people, hiking prices and taking away their jobs. Current and future emissions are reduced and eco resources are preserved, in countries where it will not otherwise happen. The West will reduce its own impact more slowly over time. There are limits to how fast you can damage peoples' lives. Hence 'net zero', not 'zero'.

You can change peoples' lives quickly whilst improving them, but the green transition in first world countries damages every aspect of citizens' lives. Push it too fast and they will rebel, initially by voting out governments and replacing them with alternative (and then more Trump-like) regimes. And by targeting both climate change protestors and scientists. You really need to take people with you. Flipping to state enforcement may be an obvious option for scientists, but is something that is only going to work on paper. In the real world, things will get very ugly, very quickly. People are simply not going to live like medieval monks for the next two hundred years, particularly whilst other nations do little or nothing.

We also need to be spending much more money of climate resilience such as lagoons to prevent urban flooding and reservoirs for summer drought, as there is no way we will stop climate change. At best we can take the edge off.

I like the relocation idea. I could have done with that when I was young. I sympathise as I suffered really badly from hayfever before decent medication was available. People don't understand how disabling it can be. Luckily, anti-histamines like Loratadine and Beclometasone dipropionate work quite well now. Take your meds throughout the hayfever season. Keep the windows closed and use aircon with a HEPA filter. Change your clothes and wash your hair when you get home. You'll feel better. And maybe the government could get cracking getting rid of all those cedars they unwisely planted.

Biden switched to conditional support - conditional on not killing even more civilians than Putin is. Netanyahu bombed Iranians in response, forcing Biden to switch back to unconditional support. If Biden flinches, Netanyahu will widen the conflict. Netanyahu is playing Washington like a fiddle: The tail is still wagging the dog.

Typical government intervention. People will get as drunk as they always used to, but it will leave them with less to spend on healthy food or their kids' schooling.

Apple do not control other peoples' governments. If you are upset with Apple, don't buy their stuff. If you are upset with the government of Vietnam, get off your bum and away from your PC, go park yourselves outside their embassy and protest there.

Maybe parents could tear themselves away from Netflix for a few moments and advise their children of the dangers of posting such material to complete strangers on the net.

So if you were an elderly farmer in a rural area, what would you do if half a dozen Yaks turn up in the middle of the night to lift your crop? Comply with their demands, accept your fate and claim on the insurance, or hide your elderly wife in your custom panic room and make like a Ninja, picking them off one by one until you had a pile of bodies for the police to collect next day? Because there are not many viable options in between, are there?

"You have a personality disorder. What you think of as normal and benign behaviour is weird, creepy and distressing for the person you profess to like. You need to stop this before it becomes toxic and criminal. Try to focus on other things - not people. Things that you can obsess about without upsetting anyone. The more you continue stalking, the worse you will feel later on when reality kicks in. You will ruin your own life as well as that of the person you are obsessing over. It's not love if they are scared or upset. You can get help or you can go cold turkey and try to sort yourself out. You are not destined to be a creepy weirdo, but you have to accept that you have a problem, and change your own behaviour."

If China want to fund our green transition with low cost kit, great. Let them. We stand no chance of doing it domestically, quickly enough. We don't have the workers, the resources or the cash.

If we pull up the drawbridge, tribalise and block Chinese tech, the green transition will progress so slowly, climate change and war will end us before we begin to 'flatten the curve'.

Cheap Chinese green tech or no green transition. Pick one. And like it or not, only one.

The green transition has to be politically blind, without artificial, geopolitical restrictions. Or it won't happen.

Carbon credits have always been a scam, but money will have to move to the Global South if green resources are to be preserved.

Indigenous communities are not all the same. Some manage the forest sustainably, only taking what they need. Others progressively erase it for farmland. Whether this sort of thing is a good deal or a bad deal depends upon the individual circumstances. The Global South needs Western money to out-bid the bribes from loggers and corporations that strip land for farming. The regimes are so corrupt, this is the only way to preserve the local flora and fauna. Without it, the forests, animals and local people would be progressively erased.

Of course Arab nations are already quite inhospitable and may soon become uninhabitable, so they may be buying land to eventually move to.

Useful tip for any Japanese visiting the UK or some other parts of Europe on holiday. Do not tell them you are a traveller or have no fixed abode.

The traveller community in the UK is not universally popular, and travellers are not universally welcomed by locals.

The ruling is unlikely to make any difference. No Western government would survive shutting down its industry, economy and society to the extent required. If they were lucky they would be voted out. If they were unlucky, they would be removed by more direct means. Instead they will ignore the ruling.

If they really want to hit Net Zero targets, they would have to shift the bulk of their domestic green transition spending to the Global South. £5m in the UK buys you a cycle path that hardly anybody uses. In the Global South, it upgrades, develops and decarbonises an entire town. Useful because the Global South is on the cusp of doing the recent Chinese consumer revolution thing, which will exponentially increase emissions without rapid intervention. And because that is where most of the eco resources that we need to defend are.

Climate change is global, so it doesn't matter where you reduce emissions. What matters is that you do it, as much as you can. So doing it where it is cheap, allows you to do more, more quickly.

But the Paris Accord is tribal, demanding EU countries do it within their own borders, where it is very expensive, and not politically survivable. Whilst allowing other countries to ignore it altogether. That was an epic fail that will come back to bite humanity. But nation states do so like the tribal thing.

quote: The states will determine by vote or legislation or perhaps both.

That actually makes sense. It's better than a nationwide ban. Americans can choose to live in a Republican state or a Democrat state, under laws they agree with. The country is so divided, it may be the safest way forward.

All novels get simplified and altered for the screen. If you are very lucky, as an author, you get to be part of the adaptation. Usually they just hand you some cash and ignore you. That's why most adaptations are so poor. Your best shot is to write filmic sequences with one eye on adaptation. Quite a few authors are now doing this, hoping that Netflix will step in with a cheque.