mikeylikesit comments

Does it really matter what I think? The data from actual testing and real-world documentation is what ought to matter.

If the question is, “Does lower battery performance in extreme heat or cold influence your decision to use an EV?” then this is something I could have an opinion about.

if he really had and intent of a terrorist attack that is troublesome

As the article says, the grenades were inert, which makes them basically just souvenirs or toys.

Still, staff in a plane or airport have no way of knowing what’s a toy and what isn’t. If he were to pull these out and threaten, people would have to take him seriously. Put these in checked luggage, and I doubt there would have been a problem. Try to carry these through security, as this guy did, and it’s time to do some explaining to the police.

Like supporting Le Pen with her history of racism and antisemitism.

Jews are fearful for their futures in France because the Far Left just partnered with a strongly antisemitic Muslim bloc to deny Le Pen.

Whatever one’s opinion about Le Pen, she’s never murdered anyone in the streets or ordered assassinations, which is far more than can be said for Putin, Modi, Biden, or most other powerful world leaders.

It’s noteworthy that the people who most want to change the “annual income barrier” are the business lobby, not primarily women themselves. If the law were amended, it would likely eliminate or at least radically lower the income threshold so that everyone would be taxed the same, that is, higher. Many women like having a tax advantage that allows them to work part-time and save some time to focus on home or their personal interests.

Many women would be livid if this law changed. Business owners would welcome a change because so many struggle to find workers. At my own company, we frequently offer women substantial raises and increases to full-time hours. Many take the offers, but about half of the married women turn them down. (Theoretically, it could be a man in this tax situation, too, but I’ve only seen women opt for it.)

Good for those women! The tax law gives them choices. People can take more money and more hours, or they can focus on things other than work that matter to them. The tax law does not prevent any woman from pursuing a career. It simply gives some women greater choices not to sit behind desks all day. It seems highly regressive to eliminate women’s choices and declare that they must work longer hours and focus only on careers.

“It’s an economic problem, but none of our economic solutions is working!”

Gee, maybe it’s not an economic problem. All the free daycare, stipends for babies, tax cuts for families, and other economic handouts aren’t going to move the needle one degree. They haven’t so far, and more of the same won’t work.

People are not sad, disaffected, and disconnected from other people because they are poor. If this were true, then Africa would have the lowest birthrate in the world. Instead, it’s the economically “comfortable” people in wealthier countries who aren’t having kids. People are ill socially and spiritually. Solutions that ignore these social and spiritual ills will fail.

They also raised all of the costs. That place is much more expensive now than it used to be.

Most items are imported. The yen at 160 to the dollar will do that.

Combine the horribly weak yen with the inflation in the U.S. that also sees prices for goods and labor up 30-40 percent in the last three years, and I’m amazed that Costco hasn’t raised prices more.

I have noticed that they’ve dropped some of their mid-range deals—not the Kirkland Signature discount stuff or the high-end premium stuff, but the branded stuff in the middle. Several items that they had carried for years that I always bought are gone now. I assume that with the weak yen and inflation, Costco just can’t reach its price point anymore.

It's called GREED, you can't even STRIKE in Japan.

If and when Japan workers start STRIKING that's when their GREEDY employers will start raising wages.

Is it greed? Or is it decades-long hangover from massive debt and overspending? If there was greed, it was the greed of the Bubble generation. That’s not what is driving economic decisions now. Japan hasn’t raised wages in decades because the money has run out. Striking and fomenting social unrest will not change this.

Until the last couple years, Japan hadn’t experienced inflation. Now that inflation is big, low wages are a problem.

Many places that pay 900-yen hourly wages are mom-and-pop shops. They’re not getting rich. Most of them are struggling to keep alive. Even many convenience stores are individually owned franchises. They’re not pulling in billions in profits.

Places like Costco are a double-edged sword for communities. They pay higher-than-average wages for entry-level or retail staff. They operate on high volume, which can put pressure on a lot of local businesses. It’s O.K. for the 300 people who get jobs at Costco. But what about the supermarkets, gas stations, and home centers nearby? They sell less. More than a few ultimately end up closing.

Until Japan reverses its demographic slide and also clears its huge public and corporate debts, this is the way of things.

I sincerely doubt it will end with a fine. Macroshaft is going to have to separate Teams from its larger Software as a Service architecture and offer customers the ability to use competing software.

Read the article. Microsoft already does that and has taken further steps to make it easier for outside developers to integrate with Office.

This is basically another money grab by the EU.

The reason that Slack has lost market share and Teams has risen is not Teams or Office. Teams on a good day is a mediocre platform for communication and project management. Basecamp and Slack have always been way ahead.

Where Microsoft is winning is with Sharepoint. Companies want the cloud storage space. For many companies, they decide already to pay for Sharepoint. Paying additional money per employee for Slack or Basecamp makes little financial sense.

Companies generally want everything integrated—storage, communications, project management, and productivity—with no fuss. It’s extra subscription cost and extra in-house IT labor to cobble together multiple platforms, even whet they do integrate fairly seamlessly.

This is the same reason that shoppers make one stop at Walmart instead of five stops at different local businesses, or one visit to Amazon instead of ten to small shop homepages. What saves consumers time, money, and stress unfortunately leads to monopoly-like conditions. Microsoft is more than happy with this and consumers are, too. Ultimately, it’s what consumers want because we keep choosing it again and again.

Gee, I wonder how much Chinese team “food” will just so happen to be “contaminated” again this Olympics?

Next step make it mandatory for juku and gakudo too

In a way, the law might be even more effective by making it optional for juku and other such places. The government will give a seal that can be displayed by any company that submits. Are parents going to send their kids anywhere that lacks the seal? Most companies will get the checks voluntarily. Those that don’t will have essentially outed themselves.

The government has a printing press. When what they have is money, the solution to every problem looks like money.

Unfortunately for the government and Japanese people, the declining birth rate reflects cultural and spiritual ills. Money will not solve the problem.

Inhaled smoke of any variety is pretty damaging to the lungs and the rest of the body too when it enters the bloodstream.

Compare the number of people who die annually of malaria in Africa with the tiny bump in lung cancer that burning katori senko might cause. If this can reduce malaria cases by even 1 or 2 percent, I’ll wager it’s still a net win.

The exams have some problems. However, on a basic level, if students cannot comprehend and express themselves on exams in Japanese, how are they supposed to function in high schools where instruction is in Japanese?

Do Japanese people not? Is this a thing in Tokyo and other big cities?

In the countryside where I have lived, I see lots of people wearing sunglasses when driving, biking, or walking. Maybe further north in Japan, there is less humidity blocking sunlight, so there is more need? Also, there are not so many tall buildings blocking the light.

Biden is wrong. America’s economy is not doing well. When it has done well, it’s not because America allows in immigrants. Japan’s economy isn’t bad because of a lack of immigration.

Today’s immigration in America mostly serves the wealthy elite. Wages for poor people are kept low, ensuring that the rich can have cheap service labor.

If economic prowess depended on immigration, why was the Japanese economy so strong in the 1970s and 1980s, when immigration was far lower than it is today? Why has China’s economy grown into a powerhouse?

Biden’s immigration comment reflects a persistent complaint and goal of globalists. They want and need free movement of labor to keep their global economic and political order afloat.

Really, the economic problem for Japan, America, and many other countries on the globalist merry-go-round is financialization. Banks and hedge funds parasitically sink their teeth into countries’ industries and then leave them for dead. Japan was one of the early victims. Other Asian nations came after. America survives, barely, because it is the central bank—it is the dollar. But even this is showing severe cracks.

Immigration is a pillar of the elite globalist power structure. Some immigration is always necessary and healthy for any country. Mass immigration is not a path to wealth for any nation.

So, yes, Japan is mildly xenophobic. Why take umbrage at this? Embrace it. Keeping Japan Japanese is the only way that the Japanese will keep their nation.

Sadly, though, Japan may already have let this boat sail. Contra Biden’s comment, there are huge numbers of foreigners already living and working in Japan. The bento that you buy? Odds are extremely high that it was made by a Vietnamese, Chinese, or other foreign worker. Why don’t Japan’s low-end wages rise? Because those jobs are filled by foreign workers, who then ship much of their money back out of the country. It’s siphoning wealth away from Japan.

"It is not possible to protect the peace with military power."

Pretty much all of history rejects this assertion. People without military might generally cease to be a people in very short order whenever they are in contact with other peoples.

The problem with having a strong military is that leaders also then want to use it. Rather than defending their own borders, they want to venture beyond.

This is where Japan sits militarily and politically now. Japan has a well armed military which would punish anyone who tried to invade the country. Combined with America’s presence in Japan, Japan has no serious threats to its lands. Some political leaders want to venture abroad again with the military, mainly to support the globalist empire’s projects.

Japan needs a military, but it’s far better off keeping this military at home, protecting the home.

Yamagami was well into adulthood and still living off of his mother’s money. From what I read, she did not become active with the Moonies until he was an adult. Yeah, the Moonies are a cult and were bleeding this woman dry, but it was not a case of child neglect. Yamagami was far past the age when he should have been able to take care of himself financially.

The problem with cults draining money from their followers is real. The corruption running back and forth between cults and political parties in Japan is real. This case highlighted both of these issues. There were no children involved, unless we’re twisting a 41-year-old man into a “child.”

What will change by parents registering extra votes for their kids?

The sinking birthrate reflects too many people delaying marriage past their prime childbearing years, more and more people not marrying or having kids at all, and those who have kids usually having only one or two.

Is there some magic public policy that would change these trends if only we elected the right politicians to office? No. Expanding childcare and other benefits has thus far only seen birthrates drop. No politicians in any party have put forward proposals that would solve the demographic collapse. Extra votes from parents won’t change the social, moral, and spiritual decay.

If the moderate political parties in the West had more sensible immigration/refugee policies, populism would die pretty quickly. Look at Japan, for example.

In the Netherlands, it’s immigration and also EU diktats shutting down farms. The Dutch have the most productive, efficient farms in the world, but Europe has set arbitrary reductions on carbon, which the government has decided to inflict on farmers.

The move is nonsense—the same food will have to be grown elsewhere. Other countries have less efficient farms, so carbon emissions overall will rise. Dutch farmers are livid, and this is also now stoking populist sentiments in the Netherlands.

We can’t let the people decide their leaders! This is a democracy!

I think that the people bowing sincerely want the problem to go away.

Hepburn is not a pronunciation method. It’s a writing system.

Japanese learners should avoid Romaji to the same extent that English learners in Japan should avoid Katakana. They will horribly mislead on pronunciation.

Hepburn is preferable when putting Japanese names and words into English. It’s an unsteady crutch that limits progress when learning Japanese.

Apple has always been its own walled garden. If it was not antitrust with the Macintosh, why is it antitrust with the iPhone?

Want Apple’s user-friendly features? Fine, but you’re locking yourself into Apple’s higher prices and inevitably slower innovation over time. Want something else? The PC and Android platforms have always been considerably more open. Tech consumers have always known this and accepted the trade offs.

Leadership skills are critical in any organization. At the same time, every leader has flaws.

Leadership training is typically not aimed at top leaders, but at middle managers. These are usually people who have been promoted into their jobs in the basis of being competent at the job of the people that they now oversee. These middle managers will probably never be promoted into any top job. Whatever sales, engineering, marketing, or other skills that made them previously competent workers do not make them competent leaders now, thus the need for training.

Leadership training is often less about improving leadership skills and more about companies giving themselves plausible deniability about middle managers’ flaws. “We’ve given them training” is an easier excuse than admitting that the entire corporate structure and hiring/promotion system is flawed.

Alternate headline: Cherry Garcia hits the unemployment line

The best assumption to make is that any data you send can be spied on. Encryption is a security arms race. The more robust the encryption, the bigger the computer needed to break it. But as quantum computing becomes more capable, it’s entirely possible that encryption will cease to be effective.

Most data won’t be snooped on because of the sheer volume of data. But if a government or organization with resources wants to target an individual, they will likely find a way.

To the extent that the U.S. government wants people using its spyware and propaganda tools (Google, Facebook, etc.) instead of foreign-run apps that do the same, people can scream hypocrisy.

But, hey, turn the hypocrisy lens back on China. The crap that they allow on foreign TikTok is totally unallowed on the highly controlled, moral domestic Chinese TikTok.

Governments will generally behave in their own self interests. There’s nothing really hypocritical about that.

They don’t call it television programming for nothing. It’s programming our minds.

@hawk,

The body’s responses when starved to slow the basal metabolic rate and extract a higher percentage of calories from food in the gut, causing the body to maintain its same weight, is well established. Use your search engine of choice…

For the survey showing medical professionals’ appallingly low knowledge of how burned fat leaves the body, it’s from this article: https://theconversation.com/when-we-lose-weight-where-does-it-go-91594

Burn more calories than you use and lose weight. Eat more calories than you burn and gain weight.

This is as simple as it gets, everything else is just fluff. There is no diet in which you eat more than you burn in which you will lose weight. 

Que the Atkins and Keto cultists nonsense....

It is true that a calorie is a calorie. It’s also true that it matters how we get our calories. Extreme diets like Atkins and Keto may swing the pendulum far too far in one direction, but there is a kernel of dietary sense behind them.

Here’s why:

Food A has 200 calories. The body uses 20 calories to digest the food. 170 calories are absorbed into the body, with 30 calories passing through the gut unextracted. The calories enter the bloodstream within 15 minutes to 1 hour after eating. The food has no additional nutrients beyond these calories. Its highly sweet flavor signals the body to start storing calories as fat.

Food B also has 200 calories. The body uses 30 calories for digestion. Under normal, non-starvation conditions, 130 calories are absorbed, and 70 pass through the gut unextracted. The calories enter the bloodstream between 1 and 4 hours after eating. The food contains various nutrients in addition to calories. The flavor is not sweet.

Food A nets the body 150 calories, which rush in the body in a short window of less than an hour. Two hours later, the person is probably hungry again. Food B nets only 100 calories, which slowly release into the body over 3 hours. Food B causes the body to feel full for longer and doesn’t signal the body to begin storing fat.

Calories may be calories, but the body does not process all foods the same. Sudden rushes of calories into the bloodstream may be welcome during intense exercise, but it just results in fat storage most of the time. Foods that take the body longer to digest can be far healthier in most situations.