I shared that experience. I also was actively excluded from all sorts of things (including essential services) because I was a foreigner. Whenever a group of expats got together, at some point in the night, the conversation would be about how everyone got discriminated against recently.

Japan simply is xenophobic. I lived there for 2 years. That’s just a fact.

You’d be surprised. I used to work in a rural factory. All the big burly red-neck older men were on tiktok during their smoke breaks.

She had to resign and register as a sex offender for a decade. It’s not like there were no consequences. Also, the mother agreed with the sentence.

During the Obama administration, the national security director (I think) created the policy of “duty to inform”. The idea being that American intelligence agencies had a duty to inform a target if they knew about an upcoming attack (even an adversary). A big exception is when the warning would compromise the source of the information.

This is just a standard fact of life for expats in Japan. I lived there for a while. I realized any meeting of foreigners would eventually devolv into everyone trading stories about how they’d been discriminated against that week. I met so many Japanese who were friendly and open and wanted to get to know me. But when you needed to get something done, you’d find office-workers, managers, cashier’s, post office workers, etc would rather just not deal with you. We called it the gaijin card when you would be especially rude and assertive to get your way. It often worked but it sucked having to be a dick just to get basic respect.

Their flag says “death to America, death to Israel, curse be upon the Jews”. In some sense, I think you can’t blame an oppressed group for radicalizing in an attempt to improve their situation. But it’s hard to sympathize with a militant, anti-semitic terrorist organization.

Personally, I think the US should end the Prosperity Guardian operation. It should end support for Israel. And it should end oil imports. This will push America more towards decarbonization while reducing America’s interest in the Middle East. But that will raise gas prices, so it’ll never happen.

There’s being informed, and there’s being saturated to the the point it affects your mental health. In 2020, I had to unsub a bunch of subreddits that had a tendency to bring up trump even when he wasn’t part of the subject at all because I was starting to really spiral. I understand wanting a reprieve from the firehouse that is the Trump/anti-trump “discourse”. It’s not so bad now, thankfully.

Agreed. This is a multi-layered fuckup. The manufacturer probably didn’t tighten things down all the way, their QA didn’t catch the critical defect, the plane inspectors didn’t catch it during inspection, the airline didn’t ground it after a pressurization warning, the pilot flew a plane with a known issue. There are several cultures of complacency at play. Hopefully the FAA can scare everyone into flying right.

The fundamental forces are physical forces. Consciousness is not a force, as far as we know.

The article was behind a paywall so apologies if this is covered:

The dam sluices were Russian controlled but the dam is on the front line. It easily could have been attacked by either side. Both sides will see flooding but moreso the Russian side because it’s flatter. Breaching the dam will empty the canal providing much-needed water to Crimea. The lower water level upstream could threaten the safety of an offline nuclear plant upriver. I can’t tell which side controls the plant, so I’m not sure who that would affect more.

Russia could have easily done this to distract Ukraine ahead of it’s counteroffensive and to make the river harder to cross. Also, Ukraine is likely more concerned about helping Ukrainians than Russia. But Ukraine could have done it for the reasons stated. We’re definitely still in the fog of war and it’s ignorant to assume we know all the details.