Luis David Yanez comments

The only thing I have to say about this is, anyone who is in the hysterical side of "we are doomed" or "it is the fault of X or Y", but you have been against nuclear power, you are really not in a position to preach to anyone.

If nuclear power had been developed as it should in all the years after the Chernobyl accident, we would be in a very different place right now in terms of our dependence of fossil fuels.

The irrational anti nuclear hysterics are at it again.

These people obviously understand nothing about radiation or nuclear power, are probably illiterate in all scientific subjects, but somehow they trust their irrational fears that have basis on the depiction of radiation by the likes of Godzilla or The Simpsons more than the international nuclear power watchdog.

Also it becomes a great pretext to once again rally people against Japan, so there is also that.

It is sad and laughable that even though it has been proven time and time again that economic sanctions as a way to stop some country of doing something or to try to do a regime change never ever work at all (I mean, Cuba, Iran, North Korea...), people continue to support them, even if they have bad consequences for the lives of every day people, and even themselves.

This article and comment section is a sad reminder of how little people actually understand, or even care to understand radiation, nuclear contamination or any topics around nuclear power.

"Estimating how many people have suffered health effects from these tests is notoriously difficult."

Because, unless you were directly affected by the initial radiation blast, giving you radiation poisoning, or some other illness very easily linked to it, all other type of radiation will conform to what is generally known as the "Background radiation" of earth, and it's very difficult to pinpoint the source of the single gama particle that caused your colon cancer as either part of one of the gama particles from the radioactive particles created after a nuclear test, or natural background radiation from the uranium rich soil of your back yard, or from a supernova that exploded billons of lights years away.

That's why you usually use statistics to compare rates with a baseline, and if the baseline hasn't moved that much, then the effects are seen as negligible.

Still, some people do not like this scientific way of doing things and continue to claim that all of the cancer from some specific area that was near a nuclear site or something like that is because of the test, without any evidence, but still claim it, and then articles like these make it seem like the scientific consensus and the anti-nuclear guy that made a bad statistic to say radiation is killing people are just as valid, make it "controversial", and therefore people continue to have an exaggerated perception of radiation risk.

There is non radioactive contamination that is as bad or worse for humans, that is also invisible, that has left places in France completely uninhabited and with restrictions (google "zone rouge"), and that even though you cannot actually measure as easy as radiation, making it even more "invisible" and dangerous than radioactive contamination, people do not care as much as they do about radiation, because of the constant anti-nuclear propaganda.

The more real threat to Japan is China, not North Korea.

The only reason North Korea is able to continue with their insane missile program in North Korea is because China continues to support them.

The moment China stops their support, the North Korea regime is done for.

But thinking of North Korea as serious is, to be honest, quite funny. I mean, even the way this is redacted it says "North Korea threat more serious than ever", which if the threat has never actually been that serious, being more serious than ever is completely meaningless.

North Korea is flexing, and using those flexes to try to negotiate sending them more money and making more concessions, as always.

Even if the threat is real, this sounds mostly as government propaganda to get people anxious about the threat of North Korea, and get more money, and making people not feel so bad when they inevitably rise taxes again.

I remember the summer of 2005 in Japan. One day while in Akihabara I felt like I was dying, and when I saw the public thermometer it said 40°.

Never felt anything like that again.

In Sapporo this summer has actually been mild.

It depends a lot in the location, amd tbh, the global change in temperature is about 1 degree since 1900, so most people shouldn't be able to tell the difference.

Though, cities have gotten way hotter than the average global because of urbanization, including more and more asphalt, less green areas and excess use of air conditioner systems.

Once again, Japan cannot and will not be part of NATO because Japan doesn't have an army as such, and the constitution prohibits Japan from having a proper army, and no, the JSDF doesn't count as an actual army, since they are heavily restricted as to what actually they can do.

Not to mention that the US is under obligation to protect Japan if anything where going to happen, and there are lots of US military bases in Japan, making Japan basically a country implicitly protected by NATO without being an actual member.

Infections are still rising in the Middle east, North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, so flying pigs still posible by 2035.

They are reaching.

The only reason why there was an non-equal visa policy was because China did so in order to push Japanese investors and tourists to visit the country for business or leisure.

So they unilaterally allowed Japanese citizens to go Visa-free, unilaterally stopped that as a way to push for Japan to remove their Covid-restrictions on China, and unilaterally now are asking for extra things to Japan to return to a Visa-Free status.

Japan doesn't trust that people from China will not overstay their visit, and there are good reasons for it.

I mean, after looking at what the Chinese government did last year, I wouldn't be surprised if people just tried to run away and never return again.

Honestly, going to China is not a priority for anyone in Japan, and the people who need to go to china will be getting a Visa anyway, so once again, this will go nowhere, but it just shows how arrogant China has become.

The anti-nuclear people, in their quest of being afraid of what they do not understand, not only deny experts on the subject without any real counterpoint to their arguments outside of nonsense like "no one really knows" or "how can that be ok?", but they are being used by 3rd actors for their own politics.

Very sad to see how nuclear hysteria is alive an well, and continues to be used for politics.

It's also funny see how, when it comes to Nuclear energy, being against what the experts say on the topic is 100% acceptable, even if they lack of any evidence or argument for doing so outside of "We don't know what will happen".

You made the Twitter code for algorithms open source. Your lawsuit is dead on arrival.

It's not that easy. First, we don't know about what Musk is actually talking about, and it's probable that he is talking about code and "trade secrets" that are not open source.

For example, the only thing we do know about is the alleged data scraping, which if true could very well be in violation of Twitter terms of use.

Second, open source doesn't mean you can use the code without restrictions. The code you talk about is actually being released under an AGPL license, wich means that if Threads is using that code, any change they did to the code, they also need to release as an Open source project, or they are violating the terms of use.

So, is this an ad for Meta's thing I didn't even knew about until I read this article?

It's really crepy how Hollywood studios just include random Chinese propaganda in their films all the time, in order to "get approved" in China.

The best part is when they do all the effort to include the propaganda and they still don't get approval in China.

Imagine if they included Russian propaganda just to be able to show it in Russian thaters.

I wonder if people would react the same...

There were actually people in Japan that didn't understand why he didn't want to come back to Japan, I mean, he has made a lot of powerful enemies in Japan with his expose, he got banned from almost every single social media for telling stories of powerful people, many times with evidence, and the original "charges" of scam and fraud were things that had already reached an agreement between the two parties, but conviniently when this guy becomes a political figure they want to persue criminal charges for that against him.

Nothing of this is surprising, but it is just sad. I really do not understand why he came back to Japan tbh.

I'm confused a little bit by Narbin's story.

The article talks about how he is married to a Japanese woman, who I would assume has Japanese citizenship. It is actually posible to apply for residence status even if you were illegally in the country if you are married to a Japanese or have a strong link to Japan.

I mean, doing this even a Taiwanese man in a same-sex relationship with a Japanese man was able to get residence after decades of living illegally in the country, and this is Japan we are talking about, a country that doesn't formally recognizes same-sex couples.

I don't know the whole story of course, so I really don't know if there are other facts outside of what is written in the article, but it seems that Narbin is probably not going to get deported, but instead of applying to stay as a refugee he needs to apply for proper residence under humanitarian grounds because of him being married to a Japanese woman.

Here is the thing.

The whole idea of "Woke" people has lately being usurped by the social right.

"Woke" people used to mean "obnoxious super lefty white cis-male that believes they are protecting minorities by insulting others for not being as enlightened or 'woke' as them", which was a very particular type of loud obnoxious person hated by literally everyone except themselves (or maybe even themselves).

But some on the social right have basically usurped the word, and made it into "anyone who is not social conservative".

It means different things to different people.

This phrase was originally intended to be used against hollywood, which meant that as long as hollywood cared more about pandering to left leaning "social justice" issues with no care for the quality of the plot or characters of a show or movie (think gender and/or race swapping being the main draw of a movie), people wouldn't be that interested to be preached, and therefore the audience would deminish.

The idea was that people weren't dumb enough to beleive corporations that just pander to whatever social issue that makes them seem like they "care", as a way to shield for their lack of ideas, content or just plain awful corporate culture.

But currently, socially right leaning people have started to use the phrase more as a rejection of any corporation showing any kind of support for sexual minorities, as they beleive that sexual minorities should dissappear from public view.

Just 3 points for people in the comments.

There are no pronouns in the Japanese language, so talking about pronouns in the context of Japan makes absolutely no sense.

Polls show that most Japanese people have been in favor of same sex marriage for a decade now, just like most are also in favor of separate last name marriage, but because of the LDP, these 2 things that, and I repeat, MOST people arr in favor of, they are not even discussed in the diet.

People in Japan can already legally change their gender, though it requires sterilization, basically saying that transexuals shouldn't be allowed to breed.

These calls for "power savings" started back in 2011 after the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, because they stoped all nuclear power plants, and now, more than 10 years after than they continue to do the same, because in these 10 years they did nothing long term to solve that problem.

Either they should have just restarted all nuclear plants, or just start to plan to future and start to build new types of power plants in order to solve the problem, but instead, Japan being Japan, they continued to say they will restart the power plants without actually doing it, and they just started to buy more and more gasoline, which at this point in time became a horrible short term solution turned into a long term non-solution.

I cannot tell who any of these people are because they have most of their face covered by a piece of cloth.

And you can tell they are in Japan, because this is one of the few places on earth where people are "suggested" (read as forced) to wear face covers, and where most kids in the country have developed a face cover psychological dependency, and feel bad if they do not have their faces covered.

If by "politically stable" you mean that since Japan is virtually a one-party state, the government can do whatever they want and there isn't much stopping them other than infighting inside the party, then yes.

The damage has already been done and it can't be reversed.

Yep, it's really sad and it will have consequences for years to come.

As some Japanese journalist said, the masks will be seen by people outside of Japan as something kind of a Burqa or Hijab that Japanese people wear as part of their culture.

Well, a lot of people have developed a type of anxiety disorder after being forced so many years to wear a mask, and feel like you would die or kill your peers if you don't wear a mask.

They have developed a psychological dependency to the mask, which in the case of young people could be pretty deeply rooted, and many of them will be unable to ever go back to normal, or take years.

fatrainfallingintheforest

I'm talking about that there is a form called the "Notification of Choice of Nationality" which you fill, mostly just with your personal info, you give it to the Koseki section of the Municipal Office where you live, and that's all you need to do.

According to the MOJ, this procedure has internally the name of "Declaration of selection of Japanese Nationality", but once again, what you have to do is fill and present at your local municipal office the "Notification of Choice of Nationality".

This gets actually recorded in your Koseki.

What the law says about what to do after this Notification is a "努力義務" (Obligation to make efforts) to get rid of your other nationality, but since this "Obligation to just make an effort" is extremely ambiguous as to what it actually constitutes, for all intents and purposes you can just continue having the other nationality without any repercussions.

In fact, there is no recorded precedent of anyone getting in any kind of trouble for not doing anything after the notification.

Actually, this "Obligation to make efforts" is used every time the government wants to make something to seem like it is an obligation just by face value while not actually being an obligation.

For example, taking the Covid Vaccine was also "動力義務".

Dual nationality is often used for international tax evasion and other crimes

Complete misinformation. With the exemption of the USA and Eritrea, all countries have residence based taxation, not citizenship based taxation.

And people who are from the USA are actually in a more precarious situation because they are liable to both, the USA and the country where they live, so there are no benefits at all for tax purposes.

I know someone with three passports (one being Japanese) and they are in the 40's... don't ask, don't tell as long as you pay your taxes.

People who are born with dual nationality can keep it for all intents and purposes. They only need to do the "choice of nationality" application in their local ward and that's all, they don't need to actually get rid of their other nationality.

Also there are people who get naturalized and just never tell Japan, but this is an state of "violation" and if found out there can be pretty heavy consequences, especially if you try to renew your passport after the fact and lie in the application about not having another nationality.

The whole point of this trial is to stop being in "violation" if they never tell Japan, as many people actually currently are.

Yet another article that doesn't really explain what this is about, and it actually makes people think this trial was about "legalizing dual nationality".

It wasn't.

What this trial was all about equality under the law. Unlike people who are born with dual nationality, which have the option of doing the rather simple "Choice of Nationality", which to be honest for all intents and purposes allows people to have dual nationality even if Japan stance is that it doesn't, while people who get a second nationality by residence get "automatically" striped of their Japanese nationality.

The main point of this trial was all about that, the fact that people who get their nationality AFTER birth, according to the law, automatically get striped of the Japanese nationality, and there is no option of doing the whole "Choice of Nationality" thingy.

Because, for example, even people who naturalize Japanese, the MOJ allows in special situations (like when that person isn't allowed to get rid of their secondary nationality) allows exactly the whole "Choice of Nationality" as "good enough".

This trial WASN'T about allowing explicitly dual nationality or anything like that.

Who would think that people who died and had something inside their systems before their dead, will continue to have that something in their bodies for a while?!

I mean, this happens with basically most virus, but who cares about those other virus, if it is covid, even if it means absolutely nothing, we will vaguely imply something scarry, and make this into one of the top news of the day.

It's also pretty sad that somehow for some people if a loved one dies it seems that one of the first things they think is about not getting covid out of the cold dead body that isn't even breathing.

I wonder if they put masks in those bodies "just in case".

From personal experience, I know for a fact that here in Japan a lot of people who do not like their current jobs, that believe they are not being paid what they deserve, that they are being exploited, and many people that think they "should" leave their current jobs, never do, because Japanese people are extremely risk averse, and many of them prefer to just continue to be a slaves for some horrible job than to look for other alternatives.

Also doesn't really help that the few that do try to improve their lives and look for better work alternatives and better work life balance, get constantly attacked by mass and social media, like the so called "Freeter" being almost a dirty word, and for example people who work for Uber Eats and Wolt full-time.

I know people who actually make a pretty decent amount of money by working about the same hours on Uber Eats and other delivery services, and it is double or triple what they used to do in their slave like job, but when they were in their slave-like job they were seen by society as "responsible" workers, while if they go for some gig economy thing like Uber eats, they are seen as a "societal problem", even though their lives are way better.

Mr Yamagami's actions resulted in real change and people taking notice

If you think that the use of violence and killing people is a legitimate way to provoke political or societal change, you are basically agreeing with Terrorism. The whole point of terrorism is to provoke political change by killing people and the use of violence.