rainyday comments

To all Tokyo residents who like the idea of paying 300,000 Yen a month to live in a tiny 1K apartment in an old building in an average neighborhood - which is basically what trends like this in major cities around the world ultimately lead to - this will no doubt come as great news.

To everyone else, be prepared because if this trend persists it is going to suck.

I feel old. In 2003 I could definitely tell the difference in contemporary fashion trends and what people had been wearing 20 years earlier in 1983.

Now in 2023 I realize I’m wearing basically the same kind of clothes I was in 2003 and 20 years of fashion trends have whipped past me unnoticed.

Fortunately it seems the young people are into it, so maybe I’m accidentally coming back into style.

We don't have skyscrapers or concrete everywhere.

That sounds very nice.

But if you are living in an environment that doesn't have any concrete in it, you are living in a vastly different environment from that in which about 90% of the population in this country lives.

Not all. I live in a city with the seaside and the countryside.

Yes, I'm sure such exist, but they are the exception rather than the rule. In the ones where most of the population lives and where the worst heat islands are - Osaka, Toyko, Nagoya, etc - its more or less business as usual - cut trees, remove shade and pave pave pave.

I live in a small city (bedroom community for a larger one). We have a declining, aging population with declining car ownership and brutal heat in the summers, yet they are as I write this cutting down and removing one of the last strands of trees (and demolishing the hill they were on) in my neighborhood in order to build a new roadway that was planned decades ago and really serves no purpose at all. The new roadway has zero roadside trees, and puts a massive swath of asphalt across an area that was entirely forest or housing when I moved in a few years ago.

If you live somewhere where this isn't happening, good for you, enjoy it while you can.

Meanwhile here in Japan cities are still fully dedicated to cutting down their trees, removing all shade and paving over every square inch that they can.

Very frustrating.

I can't get past the fact that this is company is literally named after a known serial child rapist, yet even the idea of maybe changing that doesn't seem to be on the table.

I mean, I get that it is hard for organizations that have spent most of their existence as little more than personal grooming factories for serial child rapists to embrace change, but still, this is ridiculous.

However, they did not check the sender's IP addresses.

It seems like the police here really need a better system for investigating online crimes like this. I'm not an expert but they had a very simple means of determining that this guy was innocent at their hands the whole time and nobody bothered to actually check. Presumably this was because they were all too busy using the old school way of keeping an innocent guy locked up for 42 straight days while they yelled at him to try to make him confess.

The incompetence is quite shocking.

Many have fallen for the US lie hook line and sinker.

Russia has not used cluster munitions during the SMO so far.

Ukraine, however, has being documented ruthlessly deploying the petal cluster munition in urban areas of the Donbass.

Extensive, well documented, evidence of Russian use of cluster munitions in Ukraine can be found here for anyone who actually cares about facts:

https://www.hrw.org/sites/default/files/media_2023/05/UkraineCM_Briefing_May2023_final.pdf

Russia's invasion of Ukraine was started by Russia invading Ukraine...because... your sentence is unfinished...

Because Russia is led by a raving lunatic.

Thanks for the reminder to finish that thought.

Wars are started by USA's war equipment industries.

No, Russia's invasion of Ukraine was started by Russia invading Ukraine.

The two sides have mutually exclusive demands - neither can accept what the other wants in order to end the war - so the fighting will go on until the situation changes enough that one of the sides change their demands to something it is possible for the other side to agree to.

This is possible, though hard to predict since events on the ground have already radically shifted each sides' expectations as the war has progressed.

In the first few weeks of the war there were some negotiations and Russia probably could have gotten a deal that, if it were offered today, it would jump at. That was because with the Russian army bearing down on Kyiv the Russians had a lot of leverage, and the Ukrainians were way more willing to compromise.

But the Russians themselves at that point had different demands than they do today - they still thought they could capture all of Ukraine and weren't really willing to accept anything short of Ukrainian surrender. While If Russia had just demanded Ukraine recognize Russian control of Crimea and the Donbass at that point, it seems possible that Ukrainian leaders facing the risk of defeat might have agreed to it.

When the Russian advance on Kyiv was defeated and the Ukrainians started pushing the Russians back elsewhere though, everything changed and Russia lost its dominant position in negotiations. Russia couldn't credibly threaten Kyiv, and Ukraine became way less willing to negotiate on anything short of Russia leaving all Ukrainian territory.

We're pretty much stuck until one side gets some leverage over the other and can force negotiations to progress really.

I never thought we should have been involved in this war in the first place.

Yeah, that way of thinking worked out really great in 1939, didn't it?

So the country that is literally putting bombs on the rooves of nuclear reactors is now concerned about nuclear safety, is it?

Cluster bombs folks. Yep, those illegal bombs. The peaceful warmongering NATO fans must be, well, ignoring it as usual.

Haven’t seen the peace loving Putin apologists on here complaining about them while Russians have been using them since day one. They must be ignoring it as usual.

OK. Easy. Get out a map that shows China's illegal "8-line Dash" grab of the entire South China Sea. Now, compare it to the PERFECT inclusion of the ENTIRE 8 LINE DASH AREA in the map. Then ask yourself: are you blind? Can you NOT see the EXACT inclusion of this sea area????

This is honestly just stupid. First, its the illegal 9 dash line, not the illegal 8 dash line. Second, apart from both being lines with dashes on them they look nothing alike. The real 9 dash line is between Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and China (though in reality nowhere near China). Its in the South China Sea, it doesn't jut out from an Asian continent that is a big blue blob which looks nothing like Asia into the open ocean with no other opposing landmasses that would necessitate a maritime boundary being drawn like the real one does.

This is just ridiculous, not everything is a bloody conspiracy theory.

https://www.viberate.com/blog/music-promotion/how-to-build-a-fanbase-that-can-break-ticketmaster/

Proper questions not leading ones

From the source you quoted:

"Most of Swift’s fans (41%) are in the 18- to 24-year-old Gen Z group. 78% are in the larger 18–34 age group." 

The numbers you quoted earlier are specifically her fans on TikTok - whose user base skews younger - and not her overall fanbase (which is what the numbers I'm quoting are).

Beyond that, I'm not sure how I got myself into this debate and I'll be moving on.....

Her fanbase is teenage girls.

I can't claim to be knowledgeable on the subject, but a quick Google search suggests that while that might have been true at the start of her career, her current fanbase seems to be mostly adults, and about evenly split between male and female:

https://pro.morningconsult.com/instant-intel/taylor-swift-fandom-demographic

Unfortunately for Canada, they align with a teenage girl.

Just to nitpic: Taylor Swift is 33 years old.

Not the same thing.

Vietnam is complaining about the movie, but not because it shows a wrong map of Vietnam. That would have to be the case for your analogy to work.

Plus, the map in the film is drawn in China's favor over an issue on which The Hague ruled against China.

So the film seems to be kissing up to China -- and very much smacks of Hollywood not wanting to offend the Chinese lest it lose the Chinese market and suffer major economic losses.

Another reason why the Florida analogy doesn't line up with this situation.

Look at the bloody map. Here it is:

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/movies/warner-bros-explains-line-in-barbie-s-world-map-that-sparked-ban-in-vietnam-20230707-p5dmgc.html

To say that it is "drawn in China's favor" is just ludicrous. Look at that bloody map and tell me what specific part of it somehow favors China????? China isn't even on the map for crying out loud. Neither is Vietnam, neither is the South China Sea. All you've got a a big blue blob that says "Asia" on it and looks nothing like the real Asia.

This is just ridiculous. And I'm saying this as someone who absolutely supports Vietnam's argument about where the maritime boundary between the two belong.

It would be quite ironic if, a couple of years from now, it turns out that the biggest outcome of Musk's takeover of Twitter was to allow Meta to take over the "user-to-public" text based social media market.

No doubt if that happens Musk's supporters will be on here bragging about how that was his plan all along....

So why include it in the first place? Why not show Florida or something?

Sorry, it's hard to believe it's not somehow economically (not politically) motivated.

Have you looked at the map????

What, are we supposed to avoid all crude chalk drawings to avoid offending anyone?

What if we accidentally draw Florida wrong and it offends the Floridians?

I just looked an image of the map up on Google and this is just the stupidest thing to complain about imaginable. Its a chalk drawing that doesn't show any borders or anything and is hyper unrealistically drawn, if anyone sees something political or relevant to maritime boundaries in it they really need to have their heads examined.

Perfect strawman.

A strawman is when you invent another person with a weak argument and engage with arguments that hypothetical person raises rather than the actual arguments the person you are debating makes. I didn't do that, I directly responded to your points.

Ukraine is failing in it's offensive even it admits this.

Whether or not Ukraine's offensive is failing is debatable. If you think Ukraine is failing 3 weeks into an offensive because they've only captured a couple of hundred square km (or whatever the exact measure is at this point), I'm curious to hear your assessment of the Russian winter offensive which lasted much longer and captured less territory.

To my knowledge the Ukrainian government has never said that its offensive is a failure. I've certainly seen them making statements to the effect that it is difficult and hasn't yet resulted in a breakthrough, but that isn't the same as them saying it is a failure. That is just you cheerleading the Russians, not reality.

So why again will Russia risk its Crimean territory?

Because if radiation flows out Crimea is right next door.

Removing Russia's main naval base.

Yup. I'm no expert on nuclear fallout, but from what I've read the areas that would be affected, outside the immediate vicinity of the plant which would be screwed either way, is largely dependent on which way the winds blow the cloud at the time of a radiation release (those of us who were in Japan in 2011 probably remember this quite well). If its blow south, Crimea is at risk. If it blows West, the rest of Ukraine and Europe are at risk, etc etc. So if one wanted to weaponize the plant, and one didn't care about the surrounding region, one could simply time an explosion to coincide with weather conditions that minimized risk to territory you cared about while maximizing that of your opponents. This logic could work both ways of course, but the Ukrainians are far more likely to care about what happens to Zaporizhzhia - the area that will absolutely get hit no matter what - than the Russians are. And the Russians are the ones actually in control of the plant and able to engineer such a disaster if they wanted.

I'm not saying the Russians are going to do that, but I find your argument, which amounts to little more than "no matter what, the Ukrainians did it", to not be very persuasive.

As for no guarantee NATO will get involved.

Guess you missed the latest Biden administration interviews and announcements where they literally say a nuclear weapon or disaster would need intervention.

Yes they snuck in "Disaster " right after saying weapons.

This seems to be a very broad interpretation on your part, just because Biden said this or that doesn't mean that the United States/NATO is "guaranteed" to get involved if there was a provocation at the plant.

Mind you, I'm not sure that would be a bad thing if he did. If the Russians are totally innocent as you claim and have no ill intentions towards the plant then there is no need for them to worry about NATO involvement. On the other hand, if they are considering using the plant as a kind of weapon of mass destruction that could threaten not only Ukraine but the rest of Europe as well, then yeah someone bloody well ought to be making it crystal clear to the Russians that there will be consequences to them from doing so. I'm not as willing to trust everything the Kremlin says about how saintly they are as you are, sorry.

I haven't seen a single rational explanation as to what benefit Russia gets from blowing up the plant.

The rational explanation would be that in the event that the Ukrainians acheive a breakthrough in their offensive and were threatening to cut off their lines of supply to Crimea (by severing the land bridge across occupied Zaporizhzhia), setting off a nuclear disaster at the plant before the Ukrainians took it over would create chaos for the Ukrainians and derail their offensive, giving the Russians time to withdraw and re-group.

I think this isn't a likely scenario to play out, but its not true to say that there are no scenarios in which blowing up the plant wouldn't be a rational choice that produced a benefit to the Russians (or an individual Russian commander who is making such decisions).

Would blowing up Europe's largest nuclear power plant get NATO involved or keep it out?

There is zero evidence to indicate that NATO would directly enter the war in response to anything that happens at the plant.

What do we know would actually happen if the plant blew up? Huge swaths of Ukraine would be rendered uninhabitable for generations to come, that is for sure.

Which side is likely to be more concerned with that actual outcome, Ukraine or Russia?

Russia will only care about that if it thinks part of its territory will be hit by the radiation. If the Ukrainian counteroffensive in  Zaporizhzhia succeeds and the Russians realize that will no longer be "their" territory, I highly doubt they would think twice about blowing the plant up if they thought it would slow the Ukrainians down.

It’s Russia tell Japan to back off and go brown someone else other than NATo

Well, given that NATO isn't launching cyber attacks against Japan while Russia is, they are doing a very good job of making NATO look good in comparison.

Wang's comments, whilst not the most diplomatic, 

My, we certainly are being very muted in our criticism of an extraordinary display of xenophobia from a senior official representing the position of the Chinese government, aren’t we?

are clearly in response to the massive wave of anti-Chinese McCarthyism currently sweeping across the US, particularly among scientists of Chinese descent. In a recent study some 72% of scientists of Chinese descent said they didn't feel safe in the US, with some 61% declaring they intended to leave.

No, that is you projecting a motive on Wang that fits your worldview, not what Wang’s actual motive as representative of the Chinese state is. The Chinese government doesn’t base its foreign policy around the experiences of racism that Chinese-Americans have had to deal with. That isn’t a high priority for the Chinese Communist party, which views most ofthose people as politically suspicious anyway.

Since there is very little a city government can do in practice to prevent people from taking photos in public parks, its not hard to predict where this will lead: more signs!

I've noticed that Japan has a unique approach to posting rules in parks. In my home country they usually put one big sign or notice board near an entrance where all of the rules of the park are contained and everyone can see them. The benefit of having them on one sign at the entrance is that it keeps the clutter in the park itself to a minimum, while also making it easy for users to know all the rules (if they care to).

In Japan though, every time they need to introduce a new rule in response to some complaint (like this one) they inevitably produce a bunch of signs dedicated to that one rule and sprinkle them liberally around the park.

So in my local park, we have signs saying "No golf practice" and others that say "No barbeques", while others say "Fireworks forbidden" and "Take your dog's poop home with you." The signs are literally everywhere. They give the park a very cluttered look and they are also insanely inefficient as a way of communicating the rules of the park to people who use it. In order to find the rules, one literally has to walk around the entire park and discover them one by one as you walk past the various signs. Its idiotic.

I'm guessing we can look forward to "No bathing suit photographs" signs going up in parks across Japan sometime in the near future.

s difficult to deny this when leading American politicians have actually admitted it themselves.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell:

“most of the money that’s been appropriated for Ukraine security assistance doesn’t actually go to Ukraine. It gets invested in American defense manufacturing. It funds new weapons and munitions for the U.S. armed forces to replace the older material we have provided to Ukraine. Let me be clear: this assistance means more jobs for American workers and newer weapons for American service members.”

https://scheerpost.com/2023/07/02/chris-hedges-they-lied-about-afghanistan-they-lied-about-iraq-and-they-are-lying-about-ukraine/

Straight from the horse's mouth: Ukraine is yet another American endless war designed to profit the military-industrial complex.

Gee it must be so nice to have it both ways.

Putin apologist: "This money spent helping Ukraine is a huge waste. It should be spent on Americans. Its so evil."

American politician: "But a lot of this money is being spent on things that create jobs in America."

Putin apologist: "See? This money is not being used to help Ukraine, its just being spent to help Americans. Its so evil."

Rafael Grossi, the Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and an inspection team recently visited the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant and saw no evidence of this at all.

Here's a 10 minute interview with Grossi from France 24 tv.

https://tinyurl.com/mr3zcjnr

Well, Mr. Grossi visited the plant almost a month ago, so the mere fact that he didn't see bombs then doesn't mean there aren't any now.

Also, he was being escorted by the Russians on his trip and if they had put bombs on a roof I'm guessing that "visit to the roof" would not have been included on his agenda.....

resist "the coercion of bullying and domination"

The only bullying and domination Japan and South Korea have to worry about comes from China and their pals in NK.