rainyday comments

Looks like it is headed straight at Kobe, hope everyone there is safe.

This is obviously not a clear cut issue, as even the title asks, Do you agree, implicitly acknowledging the diverse scientific views.

Merely asking “Do you agree?” does not implicitly acknowldge diverse “scientific” views, but rather the potential for people to hold views that are not based on science.

Man, the guy deliberately hit a 2 year old and his dad?

Hope he spends a lot of time behind bars sorting out that bad mood of his.

Back in the late 80s/early 90s my friends and I were going nuts for baseball cards and paying stupid amounts of money (though relatively modest compared to the figures mentioned in this article) for them.

Guess this is the current generation’s version of that. Which is fine by me.

10 to 15 years is a huge overstatement, go on any real estate portal and you will see houses that old listed for significantly above the land value.

That said, the general trend being described is true, but its more like 30 to 40 years before a house completely loses its value.

Its an insanely wasteful market, the houses built before the 80s really were junk, but there us no reason more recently built houses can’t hold value like they do everywhere else in the world

To give an idea of how insanely inefficient this is, Japan currently has a massive oversupply of houses with millions sitting empty. It also has a population shrinking by about half a million a year, a trend that is going to accelerate and result in an ever increasing number of empty houses.

Despite this, Japan built more than 800,000 new houses last year. That is actually more new houses built than the number of Japanese people who were born in the same year. This is just insanely out of whack - the country can’t afford to keep pouring a big slice of its GDP every year into building redundant houses.

The weakening of the Yen isn’t helping much. Salary at national universities here for a mid career associate professor is about 60k USD per year now. If you are a top researcher you could go to the US and earn several times that much.

Its a double whammy - hard to retain Japanese talent, and hard to get researchers outside Japan to come here (and the low pay is just one thing on a long list that makes it hard to compete).

First, and likely to be only, member of the 40-10 club (homers-wins).

Almost a lock to win his second MVP now.

Very impressive.

What is commendable about this (and most other) Japanese public museums is that they keep their admission prices extremely cheap. Entry to this one is free to high school students and younger, and only 630 Yen for everyone else.

Back in my country (Canada), admission prices for a museum like that would easily be 4 or 5 times higher, and high school students would not be free.

The downside is that I think the government restricts their ability to raise prices when costs go up, so they sometimes face problems like this.

I’m glad their campaign has been a success, keeping Japan’s museums accessible is very important.

Its worth looking up where the Second Thomas Shoal is located on a map of the region to see how ridiculous China's claim to it is. Its nowhere near any Chinese territory.

Simply daring to consider to let everyone speak freely causes the left to become crazed. He’s a Super villain!

following orders to censor other side from leftist government? Hero now.

You are the only one on here calling Zuckerberg a hero, or saying anything even remotely nice about him.

That Kei car sort of reminds me of my dog when he gets tired in this heat and just slumps over on his side.

Hope its owner is giving it enough water.

These guys are both idiots.

So literally the top crime story in Japan today is that a university student got caught with pot?

Glad they dropped it.

I’m a regular customer of these sushi places so I was angered by the behavior of this idiot. But all this talk of “sushi terrorism” and ruining this kid’s life just for licking a soy bottle was blowing things way out of proportion.

That is pretty messed up actually, they better start offering an equivalent substitute if they can't make these things anymore.

Watched the video. Gotta side with the fan on this one. This wasn't some drunk unruly fan throwing a beer at her or anything. She asked fans to splash her with water because she was hot. This fan did that, pretty gently and clearly with no intent to hurt her or anything like that.

Then she just whips that microphone hard into the crowd, with the clear intention to cause injury to the fan. Looks like she hit some random person who happened to be standing next to the one who splashed her.

I don’t think Jackson was ever accused of being in possession of child porn. This guy was strange is all I’m saying and probably way sicker than Jackson.

Guy had a massive collection of tens of thousands vintage kitsch stuff which had a few hundred year old pics (legal when they were made) mixed in with it. This is not generally how people actually into child porn go about getting it. Guy who sold the stuff to him in bulk said he didn’t know the problematic stuff was in there. Police searched his computer, house and found nothing, child porn related charges were dropped.

Think whatever you want about the guy, but nobody ever accused him of doing anything inappropriate to anybody, and saying, based on almost nothing, that he was “sicker” than a guy actually accused of child sex abuse is just unfair.

Umm he was no Mr. Bean. No comparing. He was Michael Jackson level strange.

Meaning what exactly? Reubens did some weird stuff, but he has never been accused of doing anything remotely like what Jackson has been accused of.

Really sad to see him go. Pee Wee's Big Adventure was one of my favorite movies as a kid. Also loved him in Mystery Men, which is an underappreciated classic.

Although Sapporo has not ruled out a bid for 2034 or later

Once a terrible idea takes hold in local government, its hard to get rid of it completely.

They should just completely walk away, the worst thing to do would be to keep the threat of future bids hanging in the air over its citizens.

Wow, a few days ago the guy and his company sends the largest commercial satellite into orbit aboard his own largest rocket in operation and all we get is this T-shirt type MSM unimportant Twitter logo change story.

Yeah, I wonder what idiot timed the announcement of this change of the logo, and the attendant PR campaign, to coincide with that all important rocket launch. I totally agree, that was such a stupid move.

There's a reason they call this kid the G.O.A.T. of baseball!

The GOAT talk is massively premature, but I think he is building a solid claim to being the best and most exciting player of his generation.

39 home runs and its still July, he could give Judge’s AL record (and “clean” record) from last year a run.

Putin never made that claim. Why does AP continue to publish such trash.

Because he has made that claim, on several occasions.

It's too big a risk to lose Ohtani for nothing. 

The problem with this is we don’t know what the Angels would have gotten for him.

I doubt they would have gotten much in exchange for just a couple of months of his service from a team looking to make the playoffs (like the Angels themselves are).

And by trading him for a couple of prospects (or whatever) they’d have been giving a pretty awful signal to fans that they were completely giving up on this season. In contrast, keeping him sends a much more encouraging signal, even if they do ultimately end up losing him to free agency. And who knows, they could plausibly get a wild card spot and make a playoff run, which might convince Ohtani to stay.

There is a ton of risk and uncertainty of course, but I think they made the right call in keeping him.

I wouldn't be too worried about transportation, it is one of the faster industries moving towards automation. We may very well have self driving buses/ taxis in a few decades. 

Automation isn’t a solution to transport in depopulated areas. Even a driverless vehicle incurs significant costs to run and maintain, and if an area doesn’t have enough riders or is too remote then its not going to get serviced.

And just a couple of days ago commenters were saying he is broken down because he hadn't hit 9 home runs in the past half-hour (or something like that....)

Is Japan located in the North Atlantic?

Is Turkey?

Were the members of the Warsaw Pact all located in the city of Warsaw, for that matter?

Basing opposition solely an overly literal interpretation of the name is not a particularly convincing argument.

Video of damage to the bridge is starting to circulate.

Looks expensive.

I am in the EU and things like this never occur. 

Are you joking? Just 2 years ago there were massive floods in Germany that killed more than 200. An entire village was almost completely wiped out by it.

Seems his body is breaking down. He hasn't homered in a while and is in a slump.

He has hit 7 home runs in his last 15 games.

His pitching has been noticably weaker over his past few starts, but he is not having any trouble at the plate.