You realize kissing their ass anonymously won’t actually turn you into a billionaire too?

You could be like me and just take one of theirs.

C’mon Raph, get over here and stop hiding behind the camera!

Spoiler alert: it’s not going to get better for them. It’s been downhill for them since the Reagan administration, but they keep voting for the folks that ship their jobs overseas, bankrupt their pensions, pull their social safety nets, etc. Asking for sympathy while shooting yourself in the foot really only…

Was in South Africa for the 2010 World Cup. Went on a safari while there and our guide told me basically “everything eats everything if it has the chance.” Predators, prey, doesn’t matter. If the oppourtunity is there to eat something and an animal feels like it has an advantage without expending too many physical…

I’m allergic to both extremist positions. On the one hand you have those (usually young, often teenagers or university students) who think that Japan is this wonderful place of “otaku culture” where all their dreams come true, on the other hand you have the ironically racist generalised beliefs of Japanese people and…

Until two weeks ago when I moved into Tokyo, I was the only white person in my entire area. That I know of. Likewise I have lived most of my time in Japan in rural areas. I much prefer them. In part because you will never be confused for a tourist. If you are there, it is because you live there.

As a white Japanese speaker who lived in Tokyo for two years several decades ago I would have thought you were right, but on my last visit I met black Africans (not African Americans) who lived there full time with their Japanese wives. Surprised, I asked them about the racial issues, and they both said Tokyo was a…

When non-Asians make up .5% of the population, it is not racist to assume in a busy area I am a tourist or a temporary resident. I do not deal with daily occurrences of outward racism. I document what I do because it’s unusual. I’ve been here for almost a decade, do you realise how massive a tome it would be if I…

I could pick this apart, largely on things you said I said when in fact I said people like Aizawa Yasushi said them. And Aizawa complained quite a bit about samurai who were loafers. Not even guards or mercenaries, but artists or scholars. Which is ironic because Aizawa himself was of samurai stock, and he was a…

Okay, sure, you go on thinking that, promoting the erroneous view that Japanese sociocultural history, and thus sociocultural present, is inherently racist, xenophobic, and isolationist. None of which is actually true, none of which is actually borne out by the very records and documentation you purport to draw from.…

It’s waaaay more complicated than that. Trust me, I’ve studied it rather extensively because my masters’ thesis is the rise of Japanese radical ultranationalism, and you have to start tracing it from the rise of the bakufu (the Tokugawa dynasty). When you had the various “barbarian” restrictions, it would be incorrect…

He spinned his defenders

“Sneaker net” meant physically moving the punch cards/tapes/floppies to another computer. “Sneaker” was an old word for tennis shoes (or basketball or deck shoes) which was an old word for sports shoes today.

You’ve never actually used that old tech, have old? First, it wasn’t reliable. Second, it wasn’t reliable. Third, did I mention it wasn’t reliable?

You do have a point there. It’s not hackable, certainly not without physical access, but there’s one problem, it’s old. How long will it continue to function properly? How much does it cost to chase down antique hardware to keep it operational? Perhaps it costs a time travel operation? (joke, look up John Titor,…

The A-10 has been doing missions in high threat situations. It’s currently deployed in Europe, the Middle East, and it’s doing patrols in the pacific theater. Its taken on enemies with manpads or greater and It’s been used in the sead/dead roles because of its capabilities in dealing with ground defenses.

Yeah you rarely will, even if they have learned how to do the things you want to do in the past they haven’t learned how you want them to do those things, they also want have a lot of experience of having done them many times. Even in engineering there are plenty ways to skin a cat and lots of companies have their own…

You are mistaken. There are two forms of Atheism that you need to be aware in order to understand this. Strong Atheism and Weak Atheism. Strong Atheism makes the explicit claim that god does not exist, whereas Weak Atheism (which is the common form), will simply lack belief.