Luis David Yanez comments

Freelance is not for everyone, because freelance has an inherit risk that a lot of people are not willing to take.

Now, I think the reason this question even exists is because in economic crisis moments, like this one, people either do not have a job or their job isn't enough, so they have to find something else to do, and people who tbh shouldn't be even trying to do freelance work are forced into this position.

There are people who do better with freelance work, and there are people who will do way worse doing freelance.

It isn't a zero sum game, and it isn't something in which the experience is the same for everyone.

A comparison for clarity is not the same as saying the JMA made a false claim of 5% risk

Never said that, but thanks for yet another strawman argument

the JMA and the many seismologists that have appeared in the media explaining the warning obviously think the warning was justified.

Good for them, seismologists have little to nothing to do with the subject of disaster avoidance and preparations... so yeah, not really that relevant

no panic just reasonable worry about a realistic possibility

People did panic... so, I don't understand why you either ignore that fact, or pretend it didn't happened.

 The 5% you keep trying to misrepresent has never been about the megaquake

Never said it did. I said that this is the only reliable statistic for supposed prediction of stronger earthquakes in the future, and that it sucks. This megaquake thing is using even more ambiguous numbers, which I already explained, and you just ignored.

the reported increase is from 0.1% to 0.5%.

Source

Making an appeal to authority saying the JMA is wrong based on the data they present is an obvious fallacy

You are the only one using appeal to authority here. You just a few lines behind talked about the "experts in the media", so yeah...

 Obviously saying you know more about the warning than the experts is not a valid argument.

Never said I did. But "experts" are not demigods that understand everything. You can be an expert of whatever, but the facts remain in place, not to mention that once again, my main concern was over the problems a warning like this creates, which "seismologist" are never going to care, because they only care about quakes.

It is the social element what I've been calling. The warning itself is actually kind of harmless, which is why I thought it was kind of useless, because the warning was, as I already said, to just "recheck you preparedness for an earthquake".

But did the way people reacted reflected that? No.

How people reacted was by cancelling travels, cancelling events, closing beaches, panic buying...

The week passed, and as it was obvious, in the end nothing happened... so, I rest my point

Just your daily reminder that if you care about climate change, you should also care about Nuclear Power, as it is the only form of base load (that runs 24h with the possibility of adjusting load) that has the potential of replacing fossil fuel's base load around with no geographical requirement.

We would be in a very different place if research and investment on nuclear power had continued as it did back in the 60's.

We cannot pretend that climate change is so important, yet we don't look at replacing it in realistic terms.

For defending the JMA since it did not make the false claims you say it made? Then you are invalidly criticizing the JMA, just making it appear as if their arguments came from someone else.

You made a comparison of this advisory with a simple weather forecast, so I responded to your weather forecast comparison. I really doubt the JMA would make such a comparison.

I mean, I know you like to move the goal post all the time, but come on, try to be a little bit more honest when discussing.

Which is not a useful position to take

I'm not really asking your opinion about what you believe is useful or not, I was explaining my position since you made a strawman of my position. Once again, try to be a little bit more honest, and stop using logical fallacies to boost your point.

Not only that, according to the rule, the main point of this advisory is to "Recheck your earthquake preparedness", implying that people should be ready at any moment, and this warning is just to recheck that your preparations are in place. So yeah, the idea that people should be prepared all the time is already part of this advisory.

The warning came because the earthquake that occured was above grade 7, the increase would not have been as significative with an earthquake of grade 3 for example.

Actually, according to the rule, everything above 7 gets the advisory, everything above 6.8 is "investigated" and can get the warning, and everything below 6.8 also gets it if there is a "Slow sliding different to the norm".

 Your position is like saying that a recurrence of cancer is of 5%, that is not a number you can apply to an specific situation that have its own determination of risk.

That is absolutely not my position, it is not comparable, and your analogy makes no sense.

This isn't cancer, this is an earthquake, and the 5% is for the possibility of a stronger earthquake in a 1 week period, in a general statistical sense. To be honest, this 5% is so useless it has never really helped to predict a mega earthquake.

Even the JMA uses the more ambiguous terminology of "the chance of an 8.0 or stronger earthquake after a 7.0 or stronger earthquake is one in a few hundred" for its advisory.

The data of the JMA is already included in the comments, and it does not apply to the risk of a new earthquake of any intensity as you assume, but to the expected megaquake expected on this specific location.

Did you read the data you provided? It contains nothing that provide a solid prediction.

Not to mention that this was a rule based advisory.

From 2011 anything on that area above 7.0 gets a warning, and the area is actually pretty wide. The statistical logic is the same they used when they created the rule back in 2011, which by itself was actually a reactionary rule created immediately in the aftermath of the Tohoku Earthquake, mostly because of political pressure.

 the JMA did not make that mistake, you did

What are you even talking about? What mistake? Huh?

The increase of risk they predicted was of 0.5% after an earthquake of grade 7 which would be above 2% for an earthquake of grade 8.

I've read the documents, and there was absolutely nothing mentioning those percentages.

The increase is also not for "the next week" as you also assume, that is still you applying a generalization as if specific calculations were not available for this case.

According to the rule, the advisory is for one week.

I have no idea what you are talking about, but I'm talking about the advisory (巨大地震注意)

Neither did the JMA, it just said the risk for a big earthquake elevated from undetectable to a 0.5%, criticizing the warnings for saying something they did not say is not a valid criticism.

I'm not criticizing the JMA in that argument, I'm criticizing you.

your position is the one that calls for a false dichotomy where there is no value except for surely risky or else no risk ever

You can actually read my position, which is, everyone should be prepared at ALL times, so there is no need for a special warning. Those warnings the only thing are doing is create panic, which is obvious when you see things like panic buying, cancelation of vacations, cancelation of events, and all those things that point the reality that people are right now doing.

Real world predictions and warnings can be done taking into account the whole spectrum of possibilities.

Yes, like the reaction of normal people that do not understand the risk or what this actually means and acts irrationally to blanket government warnings.

The JMA did not predicted an earthquake, the warning never makes that claim, it just reported an increase of the risk, which is perfectly fine and scientifically supported. you know, the part where you quote "USGS scientists can only calculate the probability that a significant earthquake will occur" that was what it was done.

I'm going to quote the USGS once again:

"Observations show that the chance of an earthquake being followed by a larger one nearby and within a week is about 5%. "

This happens with EVERY earthquake. In other words, every time there is an earthquake, there is a 5% chance it is the foreshock of a bigger earthquake within a week, that's why they are using the 1 week timeframe.

But once again, it happens with ALL earthquakes, the only reason they single out this one, is because they are doing some very dodgy statistical manipulation in which they want to combine, for only this one earthquake, the 5% probability of this being a foreshock with the idea that a mega earthquake will happen within 30 years.

The main reason why they picked this one is because it had a magnitude of 7.1, so they think that if this is just a foreshock, and that the main one "could" be a mega earthquake, but even if this was just a foreshock, there is no real math or way to know what the main earthquake's magnitude could be. It could be just a 7.2 magnitude earthquake (which, in the moment magnitude scale would be twice as strong), and it wouldn't be "the one".

So, to be honest, the idea that the risk increased by 5% in the next week of there being a mega earthquake is not even correct. The statistical risk of the mega earthquake doesn't increase by 5% with a strong enough earthquake, so for the most part, this advisory is pretty speculatory and based in not that much.

The same as any prediction being done, from weather to the effect of pollution.

Yep, but when there is a 0.05% of rain, the weather service doesn't give you a "PROBABLE BIG RAIN" alert.

Not being a 100% sure prediction (including the chance of an earthquake coming without any warning) is not the same as being completely useless.

Erm... if we used that metric for every risk, then never go outside, because you can die from every posible risk.

Specially because it is not a flat less than 1% elevation of the risk but it depends on the strength of the previous earthquake.

Let me be very specific here. I'm just going to quote the USGS:

"Can you predict earthquakes?

No. Neither the USGS nor any other scientists have ever predicted a major earthquake. We do not know how, and we do not expect to know how any time in the foreseeable future. USGS scientists can only calculate the probability that a significant earthquake will occur (shown on our hazard mapping) in a specific area within a certain number of years."

For the people interested, here are the publications by JMA. It give explanation and data about the earthquake thus why the first level was activated.

It's just pure statistics.

I said it in a previous post, but the logic behind this is the idea that since statistically there could be a big earthquake in the region in the next 30 years, there is a non-zero probability that the previous earthquake was a foreshock of "the big one", so they are just "waiting it out".

In other words, from now on, every time there is a similar earthquake in the region, an alert will be sent, so prepare for more of these alerts in the future.

The risk is still very low, but people do not understand statistics, numbers or relative risk, they just listen that there is an alert that "there could be a big earthquake" and they panic.

Not only that, but I really don't see what is the big benefit of sending this alert, it's not as if they will be able to stop the earthquake, not to mention that "the big one" could happen without any foreshock, making the whole ordeal just a panic inducing experience that served no real purpose.

People need to be prepared at all times, without an alert, without panicking. Making "last minute preparations" because of an alert that has less than 1% of actually predicting an actual event is completely useless, and it just creates shortages at stores, and useless panic.

 It's the only reason I was able to enjoy a sun-filled day on one of my favorite beaches yesterday.

Lucky you. Many beaches were closed because of the alert.

What kind of person…

It's pretty common in Japan, specially when some new "advisory" never heard before happens like this one.

It seems lime Tokushima was hit pretty hard by this, since it is the time of thr Awa Oodori, the biggest event in Tokushima thay brings a lot of people and money to one of the most poor regions of Japan.

I've heard that they are canceling some of the events over this.

The unintended consequences of making fear inducing declarations with very flimsy scientific ground.

People do not understand the actual risk, and like it always happens there is an exaggerated reaction from it that just creates extra damage.

I've experienced this just so many times that I've become numb.

The earthquake prediction industry is a complete scam.

The only thing that they can do is to use statistics, and then say something like "because of the statistic of a big earthquake happening in this area in the next 30 years, there is a non-zero possibility that this earthquake is just a foreshock of a larger earthquake".

I mean, it is ok to be aware and prepared, but I would love if they just stopped to make blanket predictions.

People become numb to these and then when the real big one comes, people are caught off-guard.

Yes, you are exactly right - NISA in particular is specifically designed to keep you trapped in yen. The J-gov needs you to need yen to keep this whole illusion going.

Complete nonsense.

You can buy foreing stocks with your nisa account. Foreing stocks in foreign currency.

If you go to the British Motor Museum, you can see the LAST Honda vehicle made in the UK in 2021, with the signature of every person that worked on it.

Honda LEFT the UK after Brexit, because it no longer made sense to maintain a fabric in the UK for the whole of Europe, specially after Japan signed a treaty with the EU ending import tariffs, so, it became cheaper to just export cars from Japan to Europe than make them in the UK.

Not to mention, if you ever go to Malta or Cyprus, you are going to find that a big chunk of the cars in the streets are actually old used Japanese cars directly imported to the country (because those 2 countries are also Left-hand traffic)

So yeah...

It is common knowledge in the Japanese Car Enthusiast community that getting a License for the first time without going to an "official" driving school is virtually imposible.

There are 2 types of schools, "official" schools and "unofficial". The only real difference between them is that in an "official" school, you don't need to do the official driving exam. You get an exception for all the hours of driving that you have done, and you only need to do the official written exam.

In the school they have a "final" driving test, which is the kind of like the exam, but it happens inside the school, and it isn't a police officer the person who does it like in the official exam, but the same driving instructor you have been with.

With unofficial schools, you still get to drive, and to learn how to drive and all of that, but in the end you need to go by yourself to apply for the exam at the license center, and you do the "official" driving exam, which is made to fail.

The official driving exam is EXTREMELY difficult. It's like, when you do the parking test, you think that your parking was flawless, but god forbid, your tire is a few centimeters from the grass, and that's a big no-no, test failed.

On the other hand, the "official" driving schools is way simpler, to the point that going to a driving school in Japan is thought of "buying" a license, more than actually learning to drive.

Virtually everyone who gets into an official school WILL get a driving license, even if they have proved to be a menace at the wheel while at school.

And that's the main thing, these official driving schools are in cahoots with the police, it is well known that these schools have price controls in-between them, meaning they all cost the same, and a school that tries to be cheaper will never get approved by the police as an "official" school, which is why "unofficial" schools, even if their facilities are virtually the same, they are ALWAYS way cheaper than an "official" school.

The unofficial schools are there mostly for the profesional drivers that already have a license, they know the system, and they are willing of wasting their time in many tries for a new license type instead of paying for the "official" school.

The official schools, by the way, are about 400,000 yen last time I checked, for a regular license.

So yeah, if you have a license from a country for which Japan admits exceptions when applying for the Japanese license, USE IT. Also, you can drive in Japan for 1 year with a Geneva International Driving's License.

Not surprised that this fine "journalistic site" didn't care to do more research than to say the line that the government is saying about what the NHK party is doing.

The NHK Party has said that the MAIN reasons why they did this whole hijack thing is because

They oppose the wasteful expending of the electoral billboards, because believe it or not, even though those boards should cost nothing, in reality the government is paying hundreds of thousands of yen for EACH board, and it is a waste of money.

As another way NHK Party has to make publicity for themselves. They being an small grassroots party without any support from the establishment, they have choose to make stunts to get recognition, even if negative, instead of just falling into obscurity.

The NHK Party's Tachibana has publicly endorsed Renho's candidacy because of her position on the NHK, so it isn't as if they are even trying to win.

Hokkaido again? what is it about this beautiful city and state that keep pupping in the news in a negative way

Hokkaido is not a city nor a state.

Hokkaido is a prefecture, the biggest prefecture in Japan, with an area similar to Ireland.

It is the 8th most populated prefecture of Japan, and has about 35 cities, 125 towns and 15 villages, including the 4th most populated designated city of Sapporo.

In other words, Hokkaido is very big, with a lot of people and different places that it is not that weird to think many stories coming from Hokkaido.

Could the 6 people who gave Fight's post thumbs down explain why?

Maybe it is because just because they arrested someone doesn't automatically means that person was the murderer.

Who knows, the upvotes and downvotes in this platform are just weird.

I've been downvoted previously just for providing missing context or info to a news story, and upvoted in what I considered to be a "controversial" comment, so who knows.

Is this the same DMM as the karaoke chain?

The Karaoke machine brand is "DAM" and it is from DK Karaoke, and they have the Karaoke parlour "Big Echo".

This DMM is an internet company that has digital stores, specially for games, and other products like streaming platforms.

They are also known for being one of the biggest distributors of Adult games in Japan, and they are partnered with "Nutaku" for distribution outside of Japan.

Apart from the bit about marriage being between both sexes; the same-sex marriage crowd have a tougher hill to climb.

Not really, in a recent Tokyo high court ruling, the court explicitly said that that part of the constitution doesn't imply a ban on same-sex marriage, and that in fact not allowing same-sex marriage was unconstitutional.

https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/japan-high-court-says-not-allowing-same-sex-marriage-is-unconstitutional-media-2024-03-14/

"We will respond appropriately to excessive fluctuations that deviate from fundamentals."

The only people "deviating" from the fundamentals are the people at the bank of Japan, and the insane QE they did for years, which doesn't allow them to raise interest rates like the rest of the world, because even rising it a little bit would mean a lot of money they would have to pay in interests, which makes the yen not as a good of an asset to hold when compared with other currencies with current exchange rates, which explains completely why the yen's value is falling as a rock.

It's economy 101, but they now want to claim that this is the fault of "speculators and others". Don't make me laugh.

I'm not fan of regulations, but the one thing I do beleive is that Apple in particular has malicious software that forces people to use the device they bought and own only in the way THEY allow, snd usually punish anyone who tries to get out of their wall garden.

Extra extra!

Car accidents surge after cars are allowed on the street!

For a little bit of context here, which I think is needed.

Sapporo had an elongated Winter with snow storms deep into March.

Temperatures didn't raised as usual, which kept Sapporo with a good amount of snow in April, which is rare.

"The temperature in Sapporo hit 26 degrees... and is still rising"

There is no way in hell this Frankenstein of a regulation is going to have any meaningful impact.

The main barrier of entry has never been the Class 2 License, but the business permit side, but this new regulation only takes away the necessity of a Class 2 License, while making it even more of a hassle than just becoming a self employed taxi driver in the regulatory side.

Not only that, but this regulation was only created with the idea that "if there are not enough taxi drivers, then other non-taxi drivers will do the job", but for a time-part job that pay not that much it is way too much of a hassle.

I mean, you need a month of training before you can even do the part time job, and it doesn't allow you to keep any other full time job.

This regulation is a pipe dream created by the taxi industry, and promoted by the government as a way to say "see, we also have ride sharing!"

Was there an eclipse in Japan?

Translation:

"I don't want to abuse my power in order to make people act the way I want them to, but I will be forced to become an authoritarian despot if people will not listen to me."

Making a whole article that makes it seem like something happened, when the only thing that happened is that water from a pool spilled outside of its container because of the movement of the earthquake, which is basically nothing, is one of the reasons why people are so scared by this stuff.

The anti-nuclear lobby uses ANY event of anything to make it seem like the nuclear industry is extremely unsafe, when the contrary can be easily proven with facts.

If you care about climate change at all, you cannot be anti-nuclear, specially here in Japan, because nuclear energy has been replaced, and continues to be replaced every day the reactors do not restart, with fossil fuels.

Japan had planned to phase out nuclear power after the March 2011 tsunami and Fukushima meltdown

This sentence is just false. There has never been a proper plan to do anything, and everything has stayed in this limbo in which the regulatory board on nuclear safety became extremely strict, making it almost imposible to restart any of the plants, basically just wasting everyone's time and money into the effort to "restart" the plants while not really being able to do it.

Overstating the risk of a Tsunami is NEVER a good thing.

One reason why people who could have run and take shelter back in 2011 is because they believed nothing was going to happen, because hysteric tsunami alarms and evacuation notices occurred all the time, even when absolutely nothing happened.

So, when there is a Tsunami advisory, after so many decades of Tsunami advisories, alerts and alarms that ended up in absolutely nothing, a lot of people just ignored it as they always do, because in their view, chances are this is the same as all those other times.

The really strong messaging on Tsunamis should be reserved for very dangerous situations.

It has been just about a decade since 2011, and chances are that it is going to take about 100 years to have something of that magnitude.

Right now people might be more sensible to that kind of rhetoric, because the images of 2011 are still fresh in the mind of some, but by the time the next big one comes, that memory would be long gone, and the hysteric announcement of every little tsunami there is becomes just "part of life", and therefore at that moment in time, when people SHOULD really be afraid of a Tsunami, they won't be, and the story repeats itself once again.

The media and government organizations, really have very bad judgment when it comes with risk management. In their view "it is better to be safe than sorry", without taking into account the long term consequences of their actions, and how their could become completely the oposite to what they want.

Everything gets called "far-right" now-a-days if it isn't centrist or left.

Javier Milei, the new Argentinian president, which I agree with in many aspects, also got called far-right, even when his policies are extremely different to those of Geert Wilders, which I mostly disagree with, not to mention that Milei as a hard-core libertarian isn't even really part of the left-right spectrum.

It is also pretty tiering that people who aren't centrists or leftist are called "The Trump of X".

Looking at the Wiki page of the party of Geert Wilders, it seems that the party is populist, pandering to the left and right where it is convenient, so just calling it a "far-right" is not just wrong, but it really doesn't accurately portraits their party.

To be honest, all this inaccurate name-calling reeks of media bias, and if anything that name-calling is part of why there seems to be a swing against the left in politics.

Wealth inequality continues to expand worldwide. The rich are getting richer and richer. If "socialism" were really as rampant as you claim, this wouldn't be happening.

If anything, I would argue that far left socialist economic policies end up with exactly that result.

Corruption and cronyism are a staple of heavy regulated economic models.

Monopolies become pretty much inevitable as regulations usually do not allow newer players to enter the field.

Be careful of what this actually means.

Part of this "Undeclared wealth" is by people who DO NOT LIVE IN JAPAN.

Japan has always tried to claim that Japanese nationals should pay taxes in Japan, even if they do not live in Japan, if they have "a house" or something along those lines in the country, or in the case of inheritance or "gifts", they claim to have an absolute right to Inheritance or Gifts tax right if that Japanese national has been living "constantly" outside of Japan for less than 10 years, which once again, Japan claim it doesn't even count because if they have a house or something like that in Japan they claim that they are not really "outside of Japan".